Big City 5K

*** I was not writing my blog when I did this race, but I thought I would like to put up a report for the races I did before my blog was out ***

Race start - 8:20 am
Temperature - 58 degrees
Time - 40:04

So I originally signed up for this race for two reasons (1) my friend's 10 year old son wanted to do this race and he needed someone to run with since she was already signed up for the quarter marathon and (2) my husband said he would do the race with me!

Well my husband ended up backing out, but I still ran it with the 10-year old.  About 2 weeks before the race I realized that it was on May the Fourth be with you (yes, my husband and I are fans of Star Wars.  We  even own a copy of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit).  I knew that the ten-year old (along with the rest of his family) were all Star Wars fans too, so I suggested to him that we dress up as Luke and Princess Leia for the race.  He immediately agreed and I spent the next two weeks putting together costumes.

His costume was super easy, just Khaki colored shorts and a karate gi.  I did make him a belt out of one of my old ones and made a pouch and a fake lightsaber hilt to attach to them.  My costume took a bit more work.  I made it myself by changing a tutorial I found here, out of an old sheet and I did a good deal more hand stitching on it than I would have liked.  The difficult part for me was that I knew it could possibly be rather warm (it was May after all) and I needed a way to make the dress shorter if it was hot.  I ended up attaching some buttons on the bottom hem and then sewed loops of elastic thread underneath the belt.

The morning of the race I got up, ate, got dressed and then did my hair (it was impossible to get the dress on over the hairdo, so I had to put on the dress first).  I drove over and picked up my friend and her son and then we headed downtown to park.

I didn't really have goals for myself for this race, since it was all about my friend's son.  I did hope that we might finish in 40 minutes or so, but if it took us longer it was fine as long as he was feeling good about it.

Considering there were around 14,000 runners heading to downtown, things went fairly smoothly.  We got parked and headed out to the starting block (not a line, there were way too many of us for that).  Very quickly, we started getting asked if we could pose for pictures.  We posed for more pictures than I could count and we got lots of shouts and cheers.  It was kind of fun to have random strangers be excited to see you.

Us before the race!

(Yes his face is weird on purpose.)

The quarter and half marathons started first and then us 5K people headed up to the starting line.  We were near the front and continued to to get stopped for pictures right until the race actually started.  The temperature was on the cooler side, so I didn't end up having to put my skirt up at all.  My plan for the race was to keep pace with the 10-year old and let him determine the pace.  We ran almost all of the first mile and then kept up a decent pace with breaks around every 3 minutes or so.

We got lots of cheers of recognition from both racers and spectators alike and I think it made my friend's son feel really encouraged to have people all over cheering for him.  I felt very proud of the running community to hear all the support they gave him.  We ran up the last hill and then headed down the stretch where all three races ended.  He was really tired but I took hold of his hand and had him listen to the crowd cheering us on as we ran the last 500 feet or so to the line.

Almost to the finish line!

He was so exhausted, but so proud of himself to have done it!  We grabbed our snacks and drinks and then headed over to where his family and my husband were waiting.  We continued to pose for pictures and waited to cheer for his mom, aunt and grandma as they finished their quarter marathon.