If you find me on the ground, drag me across the finish line!

So this link was sooo relevant to the usual state of my vehicles AND very impressive so I had to share: Dirty Car Art Enjoy!

And now to our regularly scheduled program...

Some of you are aware that earlier this year I set a rather stupid random "run 5K" goal. What *was* I thinking?!?! Sheesh. Anyways -- wanting to follow through on this goal I decided this was the ideal time to do so -- show season's winding down, not yet cold and miserable, and I don't have my own barn yet so not insanely busy. All good. And me being me decided just being able to run 5K around Glen Abbey wasn't going to be good enough, so I signed up for a race. A small one right?

Yeah, you're not new here, you know I of course picked the biggest race I could find. hahaha totally unintentionally of course. Only 20,000+ people involved. Sheesh.

My dad, upon hearing of my foolish goal, offered up "if you actually do it, I'll go with you" (he who has been running for about three years now and actually *knows* he can do 5k). hahaha I don't think he expected I'd actually go through w/ it, but when I sent him the E saying "I signed up for this if you want to come . . . " he did. Which was good cause way better to have company in all the waiting around before :)

So Friday night after work I go to pick up my race package @ the Direct Energy Centre. Of course there's a runner's show on at the same time so after I get my package and my tshirt and my waterbottle (not sure *why* that was 3 separate lineups, but as there weren't a ton of people there it was all good :) I wander around the booths. Not planning to continue running most of it was just interesting to look at -- BUT I did find a perfect cell-phone-sized carrier for going XC. hahaha been looking for one for ages, never occurred to me the runners would have the same issues. So was pretty happy about that.

Sunday rolls around and leave stupidly early (7:30 :) to head downtown. Park at the end of the race and catch a bus to the start (how sad is that? There just seems something wrong about a shuttle bus at a race!) End up at the start fairly early so head down to Lakeshore to watch the half-marathoners who were running through right about then. hahaha and the first groups were STILL going faster than I was planning too. Ah well.

Go to the corral -- waaayyy at the back of the pack and wait our turn. 4 mins after the "official" start of the race, I crossed the start line (yeah little computer chip on the running shoes that gives exact times :)

Here's where we went:



hahaha yeah us! Was kinda kewl though to go slowly through places where I'm usually stressed cause I'm sitting in traffic or flying cause there's no traffic :)

So it turns out I do *much* better with a big race. hahaha I had no inclination to race, per say, but I'm just competitive enough that I don't like being passed :) So finished the first km w/o any effort at all -- I was still trying to get up to a group going the pace I wanted to go at that point (apparently I started in a slower corral than necessary). At two km was feeling like I usually do at one so was reasonably happy w/ that. Took a walk break at the drink section, and by far found kms 3-4 the hardest. It was brutal. It also included the only uphill though so that may be directly related *g* hahaha. Starting at 500m from the finish there were flags every 100m which made the "just keep running" thing soooo much easier.

Anyways -- yes I survived. Total time was 30mins and 55seconds. N I was pretty happy w/ that, I gotta admit :) Even more impressive is that I wasn't sore the next day! Woohoo!

And now I can move on to way more fun things in life :)