Same race, one year later

Today was the Fisher Fair 5K (say that 5 times fast). I was looking forward to it for a number of reasons.

1. This is the race I PRed at last year so was hoping to do the same this year.

2. The Traveling Muffin said she'd run it with me. Study-ly Muffin ran it with me last year. It’s cool when your teens will actually be seen in public with you, much less run a race with you.

3. I enlisted a friend/neighbor Tara to run it with me. A newbie to running, Tara agreed to do this race one night after we'd had 1 too many blueberry martinis AND I agreed to take a class on Reiki.

The 3 of us left the house around 6:55 and drove north-east towards Fisher, and towards a very big and very DARK storm front. You could see lightening flashing in the clouds, and half-way there the wipers were necessarily on the high setting.

Things weren’t much different when we got to the fairgrounds. Bethany stated loudly and firmly that she WASN’T running this race, she’d just take a nap in the car. Tara and I decided to make a dash to the registration building and found a surprising number of other soggy participants. We were all glad to hear that the race would start around 8:30 when the storm had moved out of the area.

Tara and I agreed we weren’t going to try to pace each other – we both assumed that I would be ahead and finish before her. Just after the first mile water station (first split was 8:48) I stopped and walked briskly while I drank. And Tara cruised right past me. I never caught up after that.

Mile two marker (10:06 ) came and I walked a bit more for water. I’m not sure why I needed so much water….the muggidity was very high. At any rate, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to go sub-30 this go ‘round so didn’t really push myself. But then I got to mile 3 and heard the time keeper say “28 something” and realized that I COULD go sub-30! I sprinted the last tenth and gasped my way over the finish line. I barely heard someone say “good race! You kept me going!” I just needed to catch my breath. What I didn’t hear was my exact time but I knew I’d broke 30. That was good enough for me.

Sunday I got a phone call from one of the race organizers who told me that they had made a mistake with the finishers for my age group. Originally they had me as finishing third but found that my time actually put me at second. They would engrave a new medal and send it right out to me. That’s FUNNY – if I came in second, then there were some pretty slow 40-somethings running. What I really was interested in was my exact time. So I asked.

29:29.

YAY ME!! And now I get my pink running skirt!