Ahhhhhh!!! You guys! I RAN! I ran a race!
After five, almost six weeks, of no running and no cardio, I decided to jump right back into the swing of running with a 5K.
And honestly? It felt like the first time I ran a race. Except this time I was pumped and super excited and knew everything would be okay because I’ve been around this block before.
Damn, did it feel good.
Lindsay and I woke up at the super fun hour of 5am. Actually, my alarm went off at 4:45, 4:51, 4:57, and finally 5:03am. Ugh. (Why is waking up such a pain in the butt?)
The race started at 8am. But we had to drive to Baltimore from Northern Virginia and then figure out where to park and all that jazz. And I still needed to register for the race.
It was a sleepy morning to say the least. But, compared to some of my other hijinks with running in races, I’d say this was relatively tame.
Don’t be fooled by our smiling faces, we were yawning the whole ride there. Also, try not to be too jealous of our totally unplanned sweet matching outfits.
I don’t think the race committee anticipated such a high turnout. When I registered at 6:35am (race day registration opened at 6:30am) they only had unused Baltimore 10miler bibs left.
We putzed around the starting line area until the race began and then we were off!
The first mile marker came incredibly early. I checked my watch and it read .65miles. Maybe they were going for kilometers instead of miles. The second mile marker never seemed to show up. It finally did, still early but at least somewhat closing the gap, around 1.8miles. Okay, cool. And the third came exactly a mile after that. I’m not sure if they marked the course by driving or what but it was definitely short.
A few days after the race, they released this message on their Facebook page.
Okay, so I wasn’t crazy and my GPS watch wasn’t playing a mean joke. But still kind of disappointing that the race was .15mi short. And I am happy that they owned up to their mistake rather than being like “pfft ya’ll cray!”
The whole reason I ran this race was to snag a medal. Yes, you read that correctly. A 5K that gives out medals. Give me all the bling!
The medal is honestly nicer than some marathon medals I’ve seen.
Even though the course was short and it was so hot and humid that morning, I’m really glad I did this race. Despite the snafu the race was really well organized — multiple water stops with gatorade, nice crowd support, great volunteers, watermelon slices and cold towels at the finish. And to top it all off, I got to spend the morning with one of my best friends.
I think it’s safe to say that Sarah’s got her groove back. Ohhh snap!