Besides: it was only $6 and you got a t-shirt.
Then Lilah started saying today that she wanted us to WIN, and that she'd take a whistle to blow and tell me when I needed to hurry up.
That girl has the competition in her.
I don't think she gets that from me.
First of all, it was CRAZY how many people were there. I met my friend Mary, her two youngest kids and her friend/sometime babysitter Hannah.
Since we had strollers, we were asked to line up in the way back.
I laughed because I didn't think we belonged anywhere else!
After sizing up some of the walkers, I told Mary I simply needed to do better than the lady on two crutches. That was it. But it had to be done.
Mary snapped a good, non, self-portrait of Lilah and me before the race!
And I got one of her with baby Thomas, who isn't even three months old!
Oh yeah, she wore one and strolled one.
And she was hard core.
Right at the first mile marker, which was in a residential neighborhood, I looked over to see a crowd of girls looking at THE SMALLEST HORSE EVER!!!!
It was much smaller than a lab...it was white and everyone was taking pictures with it and I wanted to stop SO BAD!
But Mary said "Just keep going. These are people we are passing!"
"But it's SO SMALL!!"
"No! You'll lose your momentum!"
So we passed on by as I looked longingly at the tiny horse, but knowing she was right.
We kept on going, and I was surprised how much faster I wanted to go.
But all these fools were walking like they were window shopping and taking up the whole road!! And I was like, if people with babies strapped on and strollers are needing to pass you, MOVE TO THE RIGHT AND GET OUT THE WAY!
That was the most annoying thing - the dang left lane shufflers.
We even attempted to use cycling terms and yelled "On your left!" as we came up behind people, but they just kept walking Iike they were the only people on the trail, like they didn't know this was a race.
OK, maybe I do have a little of the competition in me.
I took this picture around the 1-3/4 mark - I just liked how it was all people as far as you could see.
Since I'm always complaining about the roads being blocked off around here, I got tickled and told Mary that it was more fun being part of the traffic problem than waiting on the problem to clear. Lol
And that hour and a half finish time I assumed we'd have? Well, the clock read 54:46 as I was crossing over, and if you consider that our start time was a couple minutes slower than the peeps at the front, then we probably finished in about 51 minutes.
Official time: 50:29. My pace was 17:41 a mile.
That is MUCH better than I expected!
Especially since I had walked only a mile in 30 minutes on the treadmill last week.
And extra especially since I am the least fit person I know.
But I totally get the runner's high (although I did not run, I definitely engaged that portion of my adrenal system) - when we finished, I felt AWESOME and was ready to do another race.
It reminded me just a little bit about giving birth - it was kind of hard and you got all sweaty but in the end you accomplished something and it felt really good!
Here I am at the finish line.
What? Can't see me? Let me help you with a visual aid...
Yeah, my glory got covered up by that lady there. At least you can see Lilah. She was representin'.
Luckily, Mary was able to take a picture of a real victory pose!
I'm so proud of Lilah - she forgot her whistle, but did at one point stomp her feet and tell me to "Go go go!!" when she thought my pace was lagging a little. And she enjoyed it! No complaints about riding AND she said she wanted to have a number paper like me and run when she is bigger.
:-)
And in the home stretch, Mary et al ran ahead and finished before me, becoming the poster child for bad-ass mamas everywhere.
I seriously can't wait to do it again.
As a matter of fact, there's a 7K in July that I've got my eye on...
Stay tuned.
1 comment:
That's a ton of people! I think I may have gone off road a bit. Congrats though!
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