Saturday, January 29, 2011

NHL All-Star 5K

Today was a great event out at the RBC Center as the NHL All-Star 5K was held.  It was a cold start to the day, but a good turnout of 2,000 runners.  As expected, the Hurricanes were well represented with several people wearing jerseys for the Caniac Nation.  Besides the Canes, I spotted jerseys from Boston, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Vancouver, New Jersey, Ottawa, Team USA and Hartford.

The course took us on a tour around the RBC Center then past Carter-Finley Stadium before heading out onto the roads before making the turn back to the RBC Center.  The finish line was right in front of the lawn outside the arena.

It was great to see Hurricanes play-by-play announcer John Forslund service as host and leader for cheering every runner to the finish.  He made sure to recognize everyone he could.  He gave my wife a nice shout-out as she approached the finish line.  I was cheering her on from one side and she had friends on the other side cheering for her too.  Forslund proceeded to say to her, "Number 187 is the crowd favorite".  That was great to hear.

I ran the race with my good friend Jon.  We booth ran wearing Team 413 shirts.  Started out on a good pace and took advantage of an early downhill stretch to pick the pac up.  As we made our way past mile 1, we started up Trinity Road which is nothing but a steady incline all the way to mile 2.  After making the turn onto Westchase Road heading back to the finish line, I looked at my watch and knew breaking 30 minutes was reachable if I picked up the pace a little.  I proceeded to put in a little extra and was able to cross the line in 29:30.  My buddy Jon was also able to break 30 minutes.

Overall this was a great event and I have to say thank you the NHL, the Carolina Hurricanes and NC Races for putting this on.  It would be awesome to see this turn into an annual event.  Even though the All-Star game will not be here, we could still have this event.

Below are a couple of pictures from today's event and the medal given to the first 500 people that registered for the race..  


2 comments:

Sandy said...

I ran in this one as well :-)
It was my first 5K ever and I finished at the 32 min mark. I was happy with that as I have never run a race before and had been training on a treadmill up until this point. Next year I'm doing the Krispy Kreme challenge too!! I'm currently signed up for the Raleigh Rocks 5K in April. Are you running that one?

And I'm hoping to run in the Mud Run 10K in Sept!!
Feel free to follow me on my training journey to get there!
http://emptynestfitnessquest.blogspot.com/

Unknown said...

Hi Sandy. Thanks for the comment and I became a follower of your blog. Congrats on your first 5K! That was a fun race to be a part of.

I am not planning to run the Raleigh Rocks. Next up for me is the Tobacco Road half in March and then a sprint triathlon in April. I believe my triathlon is the same weekend as Raleigh Rocks.

I am also looking to probably run the Gladiator 5K in May. That is a 5K, but there are also 15 obstacles throughout the course.