Rudolph 5K Race Report

Better late than never, right??

So last Friday night was the Rudolph Red-nose 5K race. It precedes the annual Christmas parade, and runs much of the parade route. Storms came through Thursday night - the ones that gave the Midwest lots of snow and just rain for us. And wind, LOADS of wind. It woke me up twice and I in turn woke Brent up! We had 60mph winds overnight!! Crazy. And our 70 degree temps were gone and replaced with the 30's. Blah!! Friday was cold, but not as cold as they had predicted, making it difficult to pickout what to wear. I went with a medium-warmth running jacket and tights, with my Monkey shirt under and Brent went with his standard shorts and long sleeve techs. The temps were in the low 30's but it just felt bitter! We got to the race about 45 minutes early - this race is actually on our street! (Just 17 blocks down!) It's a large race so we wanted to get there early, secure parking, and make our way through the crowds. Good plan!! We had to park really far away from the packet pickup, so we stayed warm jogging back and forth. There were a lot of seriously confused people there, so we decided to line up fairly close to the start. Excellent plan. We spotted someone else in a Monkey shirt at the line-up so we chatted with him for a while. The gun went off and after a few elbows to the head (seriously not necessary) I made it across the line. And Brent was GONE. About 5 minutes earlier he said he was just running it for fun but I guess he changed his mind! The Woodland St Bridge aka HILL was up first. Immediately I was thinking about how much I hate hills!! I was pressing hard but Brent was still waaaay ahead of me. We made it over the bridge and onto 2nd Av. It was SO pretty! All the lamposts were decked out in lights and the City Tree was lit. So pretty!! All the parade spectators were cheering for us, and two high school guys passed me, dressed as elves and passing out candy canes. And the Grinch passed me. Oh well. I was pushing hard and swearing to never do another 5K. We ran up Broad, and that means more uphill. Grrr. I saw the lead guys coming back, a pack of 5 or 6. It was so cool to see them!! Then I saw Brent not far ahead of me and I could tell he was slowing down. We turned around just before Mile 1, and not far afterwards I caught up to Brent. For a while we stayed together, but as we went back uphill on 2nd he started dropping back. Just before we were back at the stadium we hit Mile 2. Then the most boring mile ever - a full loop around the dark Titans Stadium. OMG, I was so ready to be finished, didn't care about my time, and was SO angry to be running a dark, lonely lap around the outside of the stadium. FINALLY, I made it to the finish line at 24:22, 6 seconds slower than my PR. I was actually pretty happy with my time but not my effort. It felt like SO much work to run fast. I have no clue why I sign up for 5Ks so close to marathons!! My legs felt dead and every hill made me an angry person!! My face was freezing and I was a total mess!! Brent showed up 10-15 seconds behind me and we got some water and discussed how much we hate 5Ks. He ran back to the car to get his camera and some warmer clothes for us and I hung around the finish line, totally missing my coworker and his son's first 5K finish. Brent came back with my jacket and we ended up finding them in the warm finishers tent. I saw on the results sheet that I was 4th, and I was hoping that wasn't net of moving one of the top 3 finishers out of my division. It was, so we ended up waiting on the awards ceremony FOREVER for nothing, and I wasn't even close to the 3rd place time. BUT, next year when I'm in the 30-34 I would have had 2nd!!

We ran out to catch the parade (most of which we missed......). What a blast! I had my picture made with everyone in a costume and we had lots of fun cheering at the floats. Once again people yelled out at Brent about the fact that he was wearing shorts in the 30 degree temps. It's his trademark now!!! We had a great time, and you can view my set of race and parade pics in my Flickr account. I'm too lazy and exhausted to post pics!!! We bought our tree last night - our very first REAL tree. So exciting!! AND, a nice break from working on the stupid floor in our bedroom!! We've moved upstairs to the guest room until we're done, and Brent said it was the best sleep he's ever gotten last night so there's another reason to come and visit!

Have a great night!!!