race review

Aileen and I were joking about my blog and how I should review it on here, so here goes.

We got to Park Ridge Hopsital around 1:30 to pick up our race packet and find the starting line. We parked and headed over to grab the packets, only to be told that the start line was clear on the other side of the hospital’s campus. Um. What? Ok.

Picking up the stuff was a little chaotic, but I learned that they weren’t anticipating this many people (over 400) and it’s their fourth year. Still. I hope they pull it together for next year.

It was cold. So. Cold. Like 34 degrees. But I had many layers on.

We were approached by someone from the Times-News newspaper, in hopes she could interview us. Aileen fell for it, while I inched my way over to Kenny and then we both looked at the ground and tried to avoid her looks. I didn’t want to turn her down and I didn’t really want her to talk to me. I’m waiting to check out their story tomorrow to see if Aileen made the cut.

The race started a few minutes late, and it was chaos. There was no starting chip mat and there were hundreds of people at the start, just tumbling over each other. Think of a stampede. This was it. At one point, the hundreds of people had to file up onto a sidewalk and avoid falling. Not an easy task.

My goal was to not get hurt. I knew I’d be lucky if I broke 30 minutes, but I’m pretty sore after yesterday and I really didn’t want to get hurt.

I saw the marker for Mile 1. I was at 9:18. Not too bad. I picked up my pace (I thought) and then we hit gravel. I’m not a huge fan of races that don’t warn you of the different terrain. We ran on roads, sidewalks, gravel and dirt. There were also two pretty decent hills to run up.

I never saw a marker for mile 2 or 3. I was told before the finish that I had a half mile to go, and I would have picked it up, but then I saw the finish. We were less than 200 yards away from the finish.

There were lots of kids at this race. I’m all about teaching kids to get into running at a young age, but I also think you should teach kids the basic rules and etiquette of running. You don’t stop in the middle of the pathway. Move to the side and start walking. No shoving. No kicking.

On the other hand, I was excited to hear one kid tell another, “keep moving, you’re doing great.”

My finish time was 30:15 (by my watch) but it was about 10 seconds off by their “official” time. And I didn’t get hurt.

When we finished, they grabbed the timing chip and handed you an extra large chocolate chip cookie. While the cookie was good, they didn’t have any water, sports drink or bananas on the course. You had to go back inside and get in line for those. I opted for the diet Pepsi. Oh yes. I had a soda today. It was awesome.

They posted the results in the corner of the room, where you had to fight your way to view them. They really should have had multiple copies of the results hanging up, just to avoid another stampede.

I’m not sure if I’ll do this one next year. The course wasn’t bad, but I don’t like fighting my way through a 5k. And it was cold. Let’s not forget about that.

Photos…..

Kenny….almost ready to run:

Me, ready to run!

Aileen and I:

Kenny and me (I tried to tone the photo. It was dark because of the bright sun!)

Me with my reward: