I honestly could not have asked for better weather for Sunday's race (at least in December anyway). It was about -5 deg C (23 deg F) or so and sunny, not too windy either. The race start was at 10 am so there was a bit of a chance for things to warm up. Since the race was being run for the Muscular Dystrophy Society the chip timing folks were only out for the one day instead of the charity paying for them to be there all three days of packet pickup and the race. The chip pick up was effortless the day of the race. It took about 30 seconds. I had company at this race as Neil was running his first race ever, although we opted to run separately. Apparently I have this effect on people - hang out with me and you will want to sign up for a race. The race start was a bit confusing as we couldn't hear the lady yelling into the megaphone very well, so when I thought it was time to start, really they were just shuffling all the runners from the finish area to the start line. There were four or five elves all running at different paces with bags of raffle tickets and they were given a one minute head start. The first half of the race went okay, but I may have started out a bit fast. I hit the 5K mark at about 29:44 so in theory I could have gone sub 60:00.... I started to slow down a bit though after this point. About 6 or 7K in I started chatting with a lady next to me wearing a shirt that said "Team Connor" on it. There were about 140 people or so at this race wearing these shirts so I was curious about it. Connor is a 4 year old boy who has just been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and his family and friends rallied around to raise money for the charity and run the race for him. It was pretty inspiring. This lady and I were running a similar pace so we settled in and kept chatting which probably helped me to not slow down even more. About 7.5K in I finally caught my first elf who was hiding behind a tree... Steps from the finish line I caught my second elf, so a couple more raffle tickets were added to the pot. I didn't break 60:00 - I finished in 1:00:44 - so close...
Neil hadn't finished yet so I grabbed a water and waited around the finish line for him to come through. Once he crossed the line we grabbed some Good Earth coffee (good stuff) and a burger and went indoors to eat and warm up.
Afterwards we hung around while they drew for door prizes, but even with nine tickets we didn't win anything. All in all it was a fun race. The food at the end was great, but there were no water stops along the way which is my only complaint. In the future I would bring water with me then.
3 comments:
You definitely have that effect on me: every race report I read by you, I want to do it with you! Catching elves hiding behind trees sounds even more exciting than Keebler Elves!
Someday I've gotta do a race with you. I'll let you pick it though, you seem to find the best ones! Maybe some of the races from your end of year review will wind up on next season's race calendar.
Claire - yes, one day it would be great to race together. I've been wanting to visit your neck of the woods for ages, so maybe one day it will come together.
That sounds like fun. You have Good Earth? I wonder if it's the same as the one we have around where I live. It's a vegetarian friendly restaurant and has tea and fresh squeezed fruit juices, all organic, really good place to eat.
You'll get under 60...I have only run one 10K ever, went just under 60 on it and now my speed has increased so much with just the running I do that I have a huge PR coming....
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