Race Day!

First, I want to thank all of the people who gave me loads of motivation over the past two and half months.  Without all you fabulous people, this little experiment would have failed about a week in.

We started our morning bright and early, 5:30 am, and got JT an early breakfast.  Thank goodness.  I don't think we could have dealt with trying to feed him at the site.  We got out to parking area and waited for a bus.  We managed to catch the second to last bus and thankfully, the race starters gave us about 10 minutes once we hopped off the bus to get our bearings.  Having the gun go off right after stepping off a bus would have not be good. 

This was probably the best morning to run in recent days at 7:45 am.  There was cloud cover and a nice breeze.  It was not super humid but it was starting to get a bit warm.  But after the past month of 100+ degree heat this morning felt fantastic!

I still can not believe we managed to do it.  We ran from the Tallgrass Brewery to Manhattan Running Company.

We pretty much ran across the entirety of Manhattan.  The start was nutty with nearly 400 people participating.  I had hoped that we got to the back of the pack because I didn't want the stroller to get stuck in the bottleneck start.  I managed to navigate it fairly well but the pace was way to fast - 9:05 for the first mile!  I don't think I have ever run that fast with the stroller ever.  So as you can imagine, the remainder of the miles the pace went up substantially.  If I had not of gotten sucked in, I think I could have managed to keep a steady pace and probably finished a minute or so faster.  I felt like a high school runner again getting pulled with the tide.  The first 4 miles seemed to pretty easy - all under 10 minute pace.  But holy moly, mile 5!  We hit K-State campus and the hills were on.  Thank goodness the hubby took over pushing during the hills.  I probably would have spent 15 minutes walking up all of them while navigating the stroller.  Then mile 6 was a breeze going downhill to the finish.  We pushed to the end.  My last look at the big clock was 1:00:20.   I am so proud of finishing it.  Even prouder that JT was happy as a clam while we were running.

Thanks to all of the Manhattan Running Co volunteers out with water  and stopping traffic as well as the Riley Co Police.  Big props to Tallgrass from the cold refreshing brews at the end of the race and to AJ's Pizzeria from the yummy slices of pizza.  Also, a big thank you to the ladies at Hands in Service Massage who gave a very stinky me a wonderful 5 minute shoulder/back massage.  My shoulders haven't felt this good in ages. I might just have to visit them once a month for a full hour massage.

Now I guess it is back to the usual grind, but I think I might look around for another race to run in a few months.  Maybe without the stroller?