Surf City 5k

I was very torn over whether or not to do the race given my brother-in-law’s death on Thursday. I’ve not been sleeping well and I’ve just really been struggling over the fact that I wasn’t able to make it back to the funeral yesterday. I ended up deciding to go ahead with the 5k hoping it would take my mind off things for a while. Well, it certainly did that!

To say the conditions were less than favorable would be an understatement. It was 47 degrees with 13-15 mph winds and stinging rain falling (sideways at times). I ended up walking virtually all of the course, but I did start and finish running. I finished in 57:45 which was slower than my last 5k, but I was just thrilled to finish in less than an hour given the conditions.

The course was basically an out and back, but the start and finish lines were staggered, so the back part of the course after the turn was longer than the out part. Naturally, it was the back part of the course that had us going headlong into the wind and rain. I was doing pretty good on the first part of the course out and was averaging just over a 17 minute mile pace, but lost all kinds of time after making the turn for the back part.

For about the last mile of the race, all I could think about what getting across that finish line and trying to get warm & dry. Every piece of clothing on my body my soaking wet. My hair was so wet that I had water pretty much constantly dripping from my bangs down into my eyes and face. All in all, it was a pretty miserable way to walk a 5k.

I was walking with my friend Darla. This was her first race ever after having just started walking and exercising recently. I was amazed when she said after crossing the finish line that she couldn’t wait to do another one. If that had been my first race ever, I’m not sure I would’ve been saying the same thing.

Here are my official results for the race:

Here are the nifty finisher’s medals we received, too. Yes, the little surfboards are real wood.

Finally, I just wanted to take a minute to say thanks for the emails and comments that I’ve gotten about the death of my brother-in-law. I spoke with my Mom last night and my sister is doing as well as can be expected given the circumstances. Everyone is trying to keep her stress levels down as much as possible to hopefully prevent any flare-ups with her MS. I’ll be going out to see her in a couple of weeks. (Feb. 15).

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