[shameless plug]

I wanted to share with you a few photos from my race on Saturday along with a shameless plug and some exciting news.


First the photos!!

 All ready to start my first ever 10k!! 

Crossing the finish line!!

Professional photos from the race should be online on Thursday. If there are any that I end up purchasing I will share them with you as well! But for now I have these ones taken by my awesome fan (i.e. Mom). I'm so glad she was there to capture these moments. Honestly the second one doesn't really capture how I felt. When I was crossing the finish line I felt...terrible. I was exhausted. Everything hurt. I was out of breath. I was drenched in sweat. But somehow this was the result. I guess the camera caught my emotions instead of my physical state. 

And now for an exciting announcement & a shameless plug!!

So on June 2 I'll be turning 25. Instead of having a quarter life crisis I'll be running in another race! This time I'm participating in the Lutherville Running Festival 5k. Right now I'm viewing running more as a series of building blocks: once I assemble one level I can move on to the next. The first level is a 5k. In order to assemble a level I need to be able to run the entire distance (5k, 10k, half marathon, full marathon), preferably without feeling like I want to die. So I'm going back to basics, conquering the 5k FULLY and then moving on to another 10k. 

You know what would be SUPER awesome?? If you donated a lil' bit to Cool Kids, the charity that the 5k will benefit. My fundraising page can be found here.  Seriously though--any donation will be going to a great cause and is very much appreciated. Donations go to support the creation of an educational center for children battling cancer. The goal of the center is to keep kids from falling too far beyond in school and to provide them with the important social & extracurricular activities they would normally miss due to their cancer. Even if a child has cancer, they're still a kid and they deserve the chance to enjoy being a kid as much as they can. 

That's one of the other things I love about races: they benefit a charity. A portion of your registration fee goes to the charity selected by the event planners. If you ask me, that's a win-win. Not only are you doing something good for yourself, you're also doing something good for someone in need. 

In short: more pictures to come, I'm running a 5k on my birthday, and please donate to Cool Kids!!