Running the Automattic Worldwide WP 5k in Spain

I’m in Spain for the week, and I’m in a place where it’s always sunny and rains only a few days a year. I ended up buying a Garmin which my mother brought over with her, so I was really excited to do an outside run for the wwwp5k and use it.

But instead this has been the weather for the few days I’ve been here:

Yep, rain. Lots and lots of torrential rain. So I wouldn’t be running outside.

Luckily there’s a fitness room I have access to, so I set up to run it on the treadmill (this pic is after the run):

The run went great. I listened to an audiobook for most of it and then when it finished (boo!) I switched back to my workout playlists. Just as the 5.0km rolled over, I stopped to take a picture…and the treadmill rolled over to the cooldown phase and erased the time! Doh. I had set it for 5k instead of just doing a basic/no distance run. So while I don’t have a picture of the final time, it’s etched in my mind: 28:35. So sad face I didn’t have a finish line picture, but happy that I shaved 5 minutes or so off last year’s WWWP5k :).

Just after hitting 5k:

The cool thing about this WWWP5k is that my mother was with me, and she decided she wanted to do the 5k, too.

So after my 5k + initial cool-down (below), I stayed on the treadmill and kept walking with her until she finished in just under an hour. Good job, Mom!

This event means a lot to me, because it’s something I talked about organizing with my colleagues when I first started working at Automattic, then last year I ran the 5k right when I was starting to get serious about my health again, and doing that together with everyone else really motivated me.

This year, it’s great to see a bunch of strangers come together and do something for their health!

The sun came out for a little bit later in the day, so hopefully I will get that outside run this week…let’s hope! Did you get up the Worldwide WP 5k sometime this week?