Early in the year here, at Fort Leavenworth, Elizabeth Anne and myself began running 5K races together. We have done four races already and the FroYo 5K in Kansas City, Missouri was the fifth. Luckily, it was also the warmest race that we have run. We feared that the race day would be cold, but fortunately, as the sun went up, so did the temperatures and we were treated to a great day to run.
Once we warmed up and joined in with the FroYo 5K pre-race warm-up, we headed to the starting corrals. I was happy to see that the race had set up a check-bag area. I don’t typically use the check-bag station, but the distance from the start/finish to the parking made it necessary to drop my bag off. The check-bag station was secure, very smooth and easy to use. The 5K race was large enough to separate into three waves. We ran with the second wave.
The course was noted to be the “most difficult of all of the FroYo 5K races across the nation”. I don’t know if that is true, but with the number and steepness of the hills, I don’t doubt it. Part of the course was included in the Kansas City Half-Marathon route, but I had never seen those hills before. The hills definitely added to the challenge of the course. There were two water breaks on the course, which is a little unusual and they disrupted our rhythm a little. We have become used to taking water at one and a half miles, but they had water every mile. We took water at the first and skipped the second. I think we did fairly well on the race because our finish time for the 5K was a Personal Record(PR) for Elizabeth Anne of 37:52
After the race there was a medal shaped like a spoon, a bottle of water, and a cup of Frozen Yogurt waiting on us. As the morning warmed up, the Frozen Yogurt was a nice treat to enjoy. We enjoyed the race and the hills presented a memorable challenge. The race was well organized and energetic. I would definitely encourage other to participate in this race next year, but also encourage training on hills and not flat straight aways.