Today I ran in my second 5K. It was the Bumble Bee Foods 5K at the Port of San Diego Big Bay Balloon Parade. The race kicked off the nationally televised parade at 9:45 a.m. There were 100,000 spectators there!

I was very excited about this race since I hadn’t been running much since school let out for winter break. My plan was to have a strong start, run at a solid race pace, and empty out with a very strong finish.

I’ve noticed that with 5K races, there isn’t a big emphasis at the starts. Since there are so many people including a lot of walkers, the start is not as intense as with the 1-mile races or my cross country races.

Your time doesn’t start until your chip crosses the start, but I think it’s a good idea to still start near the front because it eliminates the need to have to weave through so many people when you’re racing.

I got to the starting line pretty early and waited. There were a lot of adults around and by the time the race started, I got pushed back several rows. I think people couldn’t see me or just decided to get in front of me. Oh well.

I did not feel I had a good start because there were so many people to run around and the road was very narrow. Everyone was trying to get out so fast that somebody even fell in front of me!

Once I was passed the start, not as many people were in the way. Then I went into my maintaining pace. At the end I was too tired to sprint so I just went as fast as I possibly could.

I was looking for some other kids that might be my age but didn’t see any. During the race, I thought I was running kind of slow, but when I got near the finish and saw the clock, I was surprised to see that I was way faster that my last 5k! My time was 20:07.

After the race, my legs felt weird because I used all the fuel in them. I was sweating a lot and breathing hard.

I didn’t know how I did or what- it was hard to tell. We were going to go home, but the remembered to watch the balloon parade. The balloons were huge!

My mom decided to ask about the race results and guess what? She found out that I had won for mens 12-and-unders!! I was so excited and proud of myself. I couldn’t believe that I came in 1st place. What a fun morning.

Click here to see the race results.