My wife's work sponsors a 5K every year. In years past, we've walked the 5K while pushing our son in a stroller. This year, though, since I've been running, my wife asked if I wanted to run it. And I said that would be cool. Then this morning, our son woke up with a fever, and my wife offered to stay home and snooze with him while I ran the 5K. Awesome!

This was my first time ever running in a race. When we walk the 5K, we generally finish almost entirely last, scant minutes before they deflate the finish line. One year, we were beaten by an octogenarian who was also walking. That's a very comfortable way to complete a 5K; our biggest problem has been managing a one- or two-year old who doesn't want to stay in the stroller.

This time, though, I maintained a steady 6 mph pace through the entire 5K, except when I paused to tie my shoes (forgot to double knot them, oops) and at the very end when I figured I might as well give it everything I had for the last .107 miles. And I learned that maintaining a steady pace through an entire 5K is a little depressing, because you spend most of the race passing people who started out too fast. And of course, half the people you pass immediately start running a bit faster, so now you simultaneously feel sorry for them and wish you didn't have to listen to them panting right behind you.

The official timing has me at 30:55, which is a bit shy of my goal of 30:00, but well within my secondary goal of "no more than twice as long as the first-place finisher." I also finished slightly faster than one dude who was somehow walking almost as fast as I was running, and every six-year old who competed. Two of the three seven-year olds beat me, though.