Chris showing off his super cool high "quality" sports bag
Really?, really?, REALLY???? ~~ I want the shirt instead!!!!!!
This is a view from the van window before the race... YUCK!!!!
Me on the phone with Jackie to tell her I won my age group!!!!!
Chris -- after he got his medal -- I am SOOOOO proud of him!!!!
Us at home, with our usual Chris's first place, and my 2nd place fingers.... *sigh*
Cameron snapped this pic of us and our medals, the kids are so very proud of our medals!!!Saturday, May 8. 6:00 am. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP..... my Saturday morning alarm goes off. This alarm is just for my Saturday L-O-N-G runs. normally. Today it is my wake up alarm for the 5K. I peek through the blinds to look at how my flag is blowing and to see if it 'looks' cold (cuz, you can tell from looking, right?!??!?!?!?!) I am astounded to see that my flag is blowing HARD, and not only does it look cold, but it's also raining. Great, just great. I have a head cold already..... my allergies have been acting up all week!! And, to add to that, Chris's work schedule has been crazy -- so I haven't gotten to run at all this week, plus, our 1/2 marathon is 5 weeks and 1 day away, and I really need to focus on my long runs... NOT 5K races!!!!! I am NOT excited about today's run, at all!! Fortunately, I am not at all worried about my lil monsters, they are in fabulous hands... my awesome sister spent the night to be here with the kids for this morning! 6:35 -- we are out the door. It turns out, IT'S FRE-EAKIN COLD!!!!! BURRR!!!!!!
We got to the church that is hosting the run at about 7:10 am, went and got our packets....... ugh. I really like race tee's. I am still relatively new to this, and we have a 'thing', we wear our race tee's all day, it's our cheesy way of playing matchy-matchy and 'bragging' (in an oh-so-subtle way) that we are 5K'ers. But, this race gave us "quality sports bags"... yeah -- you read that right, "quality sports bags" ... you'll get this once you see the pic of our "quality" sports bag. Anyhow...... after we get our packets and such, we head back to the van, where it is warm and dry! We contemplate driving somewhere for coffee, but ultimately decide to stay put and wait. Chris is brave and gets out of the van several times to use the bathroom (in the church) and we watch the weather get stormier and stormier as more and more cars pull up. Sudden;y it occurs to me that I am not only going to freeze, but I just may come in last -- like absolutely last. The ONLY people who show up to run in this crummy weather are the 'real runners' you know, the 6-7 minute mile people....... uh-oh. Now I am really panicking. At 7:45, we decide to last minute pee, then go mill around near the starting line. We wind up talking to a fellow who is a hard core runner, usually finishes a 5K in the 17 minute range, and is a bit bummed at having come in 6th place overall at the Ramp Run (which he ALSO says was NOT 3.1 miles).... yup, my suspicions are now confirmed. I am doomed to last place today. doomed.
8:00am. The pastor of the church leads us in a prayer, and we are off. 39 degrees, 35-40 mph winds, and raining, and I PAID someone $15 to let me run this race. Irony, sheer irony!!!!
The course is bizarre. It is a mix of mowed fields, pavement, mowed back yards, driveways, and sort-of-used-to-maybe-be-a-path ways. The first mile is fun and a good mix of grass, gravel and pavement. There are only 71 idiots who actually showed up to run this, I am 2 people behind Chris, and we are in the definite front of the pack. Then we go through lots more grassy areas and the pack breaks up substantially. This is also where the 13-18 year old track teams start to walk, so it breaks things up a bit. About the 2 mile mark, I am right behind Chris and I am trying to tell him we should buy the house that we are running past, but he is in some serious runner-zone. Turns out he is outrageously sore from a rough Taekwondo class last night, his thighs are killin him from a mountain-climber/push-up interval blast they put him through. I am right behind him through one of the last turns and I slowly caught up to him and I am now running beside him. I can see the church in the distance, we've only got about .5 miles to go -- and he says "I think you got me this time, baby"... and, I know full well that this means his pride is injured because I finally caught him in a race. Then, outta nowhere -- he takes off. And he kept going!!!!! He didn't think his thighs were gonna hold up through the grassy sprint at the end, so he gave 110% to just get through to the finish. He finished a full 10 seconds ahead of me, that's how fast he was going!!!! After we both finished, we got some post-race food and the results were being printed and brought over..... so, we were nosy. After some serious searching and making sure we read it right, we discovered that Chris got 3rd in his age group, and I got 1st!!!!! We stuck around for the awards, then rushed home to get the boys to their T-ball game!!! All in all, it was a fun run, and I am definitely willing to repeat this one again next year -- but, I'll pass on my "quality" gym bag.
Chris finished in 26:41 (3rd out of 6 in his age group) and I finished in 26:51 (1st out of 5 in my age group)
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