Magic Mountain Man 5K Race

One of the goals Jay and I have every year is to run at least 3 races. Usually these are just 5K, but I'm hoping than one day we will participate in either a 10K or even a half-marathon. I may even harbor a very quiet dream of completing a triathlon one day (a very small one, mind you). With the events of this year, we have missed most of our usual races. But things have thankfully become more quiet in our lives, and I decided to try to cram all our races into the last 3 months of the year.

This weekend we headed to Castaic, CA to run in the 5K portion of the Sport Chalet Magic Mountain Man race. We woke up bright and early Saturday morning and drove to Lake Castaic. The race benefited the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a cause that Jay and I were happy to support. We arrived just in time to get our bibs, our goody bag, shoe timers, and get warmed up.

Neither of us has trained in the last month. Normally we try to set a training schedule, and we had been running a 5K a couple times a week working on our time and endurance. In the last month, we haven't run at all. So this course ended up being more challenging than I at least was prepared for. Jay is a natural athlete; he kindly stayed with me during the race. He was actually running circles around me at one point, supposedly to encourage me. We finished the race in 37 minutes - I'll take a 12 minute mile considering I hadn't even laced up my running shoes in 4 weeks!

The photo below we took immediately after we finished. Yes, I'm aware of how handsome my husband is, even after running 3.2 miles! The beautiful scenery really helped me get through it - I was so happy to be in such a beautiful setting, with the strength and health to get through a 5K race with little to no preparation. It made me feel very grateful.