Eat My Crust 5k Race Recap

My very last race of the season was the Eat My Crust 5k on May 5th. It's a pizza themed 5k that my local running group was doing as a team race so I decided to join in on the fun. It's a pretty popular 5k given that there's free pizza afterwards and it's sponsored by a local pizza company. I wasn't planning on any pizza (darn dairy intolerance!) but it did boast a pretty cool finisher medal!

It's also a point to point course through some pretty neighborhoods in a nice area of town which sets it apart from a lot of the local 5ks. I thought they did a great job with transporting people from the parking lot to the finish line although there were a lot of people who arrived without giving themselves adequate time to make it to the start line early. My experience is that a lot of local runners like to roll in just before race start but I'm in full runDisney mode and like to get there plenty early.

The course was a bit crowded at the beginning but soon we had the full width of a two lane road to run on and I didn't have a problem navigating my intervals. It was warm and humid for this race but I wasn't planning on a PR. I just wanted a good strong effort to earn my bling.

The race ends on a high school track which I thought was pretty cool. I had been having issues with soreness in my quads the whole week leading up to the race but they felt fine until I tried to sprint to the finish line. Then they let me know that sprints were not in the cards. I was kind of concerned after the finish that I might have injured myself but I took it very easy after the race and I feel totally fine now. Lesson learned. No weighted squats the week before a race.

The finisher medal was a really cool spinning pizza medal. It was the 8th annual running of this race so the medal looks like an 8 made out of pizzas. So cool! I ended up 9th in my age group with a time of 33:51 which is just 10 seconds shy of my 2nd best 5k time. I was really happy with it. It was my last race in the 25-29 age group. Alas, the 30-34 and 35-39 age groups are much more competitive so I have a lot of work to do if I want to place in an age group in the next decade!

The 5k is still my least favorite distance of all that I've run but I did really enjoy this race. They had a lot of booths and activities going on after the race. Plus loads of post race snacks-pizza, a variety of fruits and breakfast tacos. I just stuck with water this race but it's nice to see a variety of food options as I've been to plenty of races where they don't offer any post race food options that are dairy free. It was a great way to finish out the Florida running season.