Last night our church hosted a 5k race. It started at 7:27 at night and was a 3.1 mile loop around the church. We went through a road by farms with lots of manure, even saw people out on horseback at night, ran by a high school football stadium with a game going on, and then through a cemetary called the Freedom Cemetary. The area where our church is used to be called Liberia and was part of the underground railroad. And the cemetary was a place for slaves to be buried. The purpose of the race was to raise awareness for the slavery that exists today around the world.
Having never run a 5 k before I started training for about 6 weeks or so with a goal of running 27 minutes. Since the race was at night, I practiced at night and was used to the dark. Most people had headlights on and they had lots of luminaries around the raceway so you knew where to go. They had over 60 volunteers directing traffic and giving us encouragement and telling us which way to turn.
Joe doesn't run, but this was his 2nd 5 k race this year. He ran once 1 week ago and only a mile and he was ready to go. He works out 3-4 times a week so didn't feel he needed to run.
So they had about 140 people run/walking the course. Joe wanted to be in the front, so I joined him and found myself going much faster than i ever wanted to go. My phone told me I was runing 8:15 second miles, which is great but I didn't think I could keep up that pace, and I was right.
Joe finished 1st in his age group, 30-39 with a time of 24:30 beating his only other time by 20 seconds. I got 4th in my age group with a time of 27:22. So I almost did the 27 minutes I wanted. We were both happy with what we did and enjoyed the bonfire afterwards with smores.
Not for Sale is one of the organizations we teamed up with to raise money for. Their website is below if you are interested in the Slavery around the world.
www.notforsalecampaign.org
Sunday we are having a Orphan experience to see what it is like for orphans around the world. So that should be interesting and eye opening for the whole family.
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