What are we talking about today?

I'll get back to theme days once I find a groove of posting regularly. In the meantime, most of my posts are about some variation of books, bikes, buses, or Broadway. Plus bits about writing, nonprofits, and grief from time to time.

This blog is mostly lighthearted and pretty silly. It's not about the terrible things happening in the world, but please know that I'm not ignoring those things. I just generally don't write about them here.

04 July 2009

Let Firecrackers Run

Yep, "Firecracker Run" was the name of the race today. What? I didn't name it!

Yeah, so for the second hit year in a row, Chad & I got lost on our way to the race. This year, we got more lost than last year. I didn't know that was possible.

I was all lined up at the start, and realised that I didn't have any sunscreen on. Oops! Far too late to do anything about it at that point, so I just didn't worry about it. We took off, and I was calling myself all kinds of crazy for signing up for the 10 mile for the first couple of miles. But, I got all settled into my stride, remembered to take walk breaks at each mile, and more or less focused on enjoying my run. And wondering what Chad was doing; he volunteered today, and he drove past me a couple of times. Apparently, he was delivering supplies to the aid stations.

So, not long past mile 3 (for me), I noticed someone up ahead that I hadn't seen before. For a moment, I wondered if that was the leader of the race coming back already, then I thought, "No, it can't be," then I saw that it was. Sheesh. Also, wow! Was he ever moving fast. (It turned out that he wasn't quite going twice as fast as me. I'll take it.)

It's my intention for the next couple of months to experiment with the various sports gels & carb replacements available to see what I like & what works for me. These past two weeks, I've used fruit leather; cheap, simple, and pretty well tasty. (The jury is still out on effective.) I was feeling a bit silly taking some along with me today, until I saw how many of the front-of-the-pack people had their PowerBar gels & other fancy stuff. So, I ate my fruit leather. It was so hot out that when I took it out at mile 5, there was condensation on the inside of the package. Yikes.

The sun came out from behind a cloud at mile 8, and that's when I found out how hot it was. That is, very hot. It stayed out for the remainder of the race (about 22 more minutes), but my back was to the sun for most of that time, so it wasn't too bad.

As ever, I was grateful to the encouragement shouters, aid station workers, and all-around fun people gathered near the finish to cheer in the stragglers. Since it was my first 10-mile race, I couldn't help but PR (gotta love the first race at a new distance), and since there were only 3 people in my age group, I couldn't help but get a medal, either. Brilliant!

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