But I'm getting ahead of myself, as usual.
My fabulous in-laws came to our house this morning at the ridiculous hour of 6:45, so Dean and I could head off to the Run for the Zoo 5K.
This was a big race, but it was pretty well organized, and we were able to check our gear and pick up our chips with time to spare. Typically, the races organized by CE and affiliated with Nike include a really lame warm-up, and this was no exception. I'm sorry, but I draw the line at jumping jacks before a race--especially in a crowd of 3,000 people. It's just a little weird.
Lame warm-up over, we were off. I had been worried it would be too packed to actually *run*, but the course was nice and wide, and there was plenty of room. I hit the first mile marker in under ten minutes. Was still on pace when I hit the second mile marker. And I'm thinking, "I'm actually going to hit my under-30 5K TODAY." Sadly, it was not to be. I finished (by my watch--haven't checked for the chip times yet) at 31 minutes. SO, SO close. But take a little trip down 5K memory lane with me:
December 2007: 39 minutes, 7 seconds (really adverse conditions for this one, but yes I really was very slow at this point, too)
January (nearly) 2008: 36 minutes, 25 seconds
March 2008: 33 minutes, 22 seconds
June 2008: 31 minutes
In the world of 5Ks, this is pretty huge. I've shaved EIGHT minutes off my time in six months. At this rate, I should be running a sub-25 5K by fall. Okay, so that might not happen. But I'm definitely getting faster, people. I think that sub-30 5K could be just around the corner (I'd hoped I'd bag it by fall, but I think it will happen sooner than that).
So anyway, back to the race. Dean and I met up at the finish line (he was a few minutes ahead of me), and then we hung around and waited for my in-laws to show up with the girls. Of course, they got stuck in all kinds of race traffic, so on top of getting them out of bed at an ungodly hour, we also forced them to sit in traffic with our kids. Oops. Sorry, guys!
The kids' race ended up being a disaster. They had it set up so that the start line was also the finish line, which basically meant the kids had to run a loop in a rather narrow space. And there were a lot of kids. There wasn't a good place for the parents to help the kids navigate this, so I basically had to leave the girls at the start line, asking Ella to please watch her sister. I walked a few feet away to watch the race as it started, and my girls were nowhere to be found. Talk about a heart attack. I mean, there was basically nowhere they could have gone but into the race chute, but I didn't see them anywhere. I did find them running the race a few seconds later (it was pretty crowded), then I collected them, and we collected their medals. It wasn't the greatest first race experience for them. Both girls declared it "scary." I'd have to agree. I'm running an all-women's 8K (that's 5 miles) in a few weeks, and I think they might have a girls-only kids' race. If they do, I might see if the girls want to try that. The set-up for the zoo kids' race was pretty dumb, which was surprising because the adult races were really well-organized. Still, we had a nice Sunday morning at the races.
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