Here we go right? It was the race day. Now in the past when I would talk with Daryl about sports people being superstitious about what they do before a big game I would say things like ‘that’s so dumb… or how could people think that this would make a difference….’ and most of it was just me razzing him, but some of it was me actually thinking that way. Well, up until this morning. I had my blue running shirt that I always wear – check. My regular head band – check. The running shoes that I like – check. New socks. Hum, new socks. Should I wear them or should I wear the old ones that I normally wear? Would this change the course of how I’m going to run? OK, this was stupid and I put the socks on and loaded up the truck. Of course I was early because they said that the race was timed by some kind of chip thing and when I asked a friend at work, he said that the chip goes on your shoes. But after checking in my packet like 6 times, I didn’t see any chip. Could it have fallen out of my packet or maybe they forgot it? So off I went to find out just what I was supposed to do. I parked the truck with my kayak sticking out in the back of it and then tried to find someone to answer my question on this chip thing. Honestly even for a little while I thought that maybe it was OK that I didn’t get one. That way I wasn’t going to be timed. But sooner or later I’d have to be in a race that was timed – so just get it over with right? I found some workers that I could ask and they said that it’s on your number bib. Pretty cool. Since I was in the building I thought that I’d hit the bathroom before the race started. I didn’t want to be thirsty during the race so I drank 4 glasses of water before I left home and 2 glasses on the way to town. Next thing, blend in. I was hanging out just stretching once in awhile, and with me being at the race about 40 minutes early I had a lot of time to stretch. Now the first race was getting ready to leave. It was the 1/2 marathon people and after the Star Spangled Banner was sung, they were off. There was a music group playing the Rocky song in the background and it was really cool. OK, our race was now next. And I for sure didn’t want to have to go to the bathroom when we were racing, so back I went just in case. The announcer got on the system and said it was time for us to get ready. I got my IPod ready and started up Johnny Cash and set the time. Well the announcer talked and then talked some more and I kept having my timer reset on my IPod. I started to panic because I was messing it up with resetting it so many times and I was nervous, but he did eventually finish and then…. we were off. Now I’m thinking that the same group was playing Rocky in the background – but I had no clue. I was just trying to think to myself, don’t panic and run. The race was a 10k and even though I’ve run 6 1/2 miles more than once this past week, it sure felt different. I could feel myself worrying about getting lost or not being able to finish. I think that this running stuff is a lot like riding a bike. You just have to tell yourself that you can do it. So listening to ‘Ring of Fire’ by Johnny and telling myself that I could do this, I was able to get the race done. They said that it was a flat course, but there was still a couple of good hills in it I thought. The one thing that is really cool about the race was that the runners encouraged each other. If someone was getting tired or wanting to walk, the others would talk them through it. I set my IPod to a time goal for myself and even though I wasn’t over the finish line when it went off, I still felt proud when I did cross the line. I’m not 20 anymore and I would never had guessed that at my age that I’d be running 6 miles in a race with Decorah people. After the race I saw a bunch of tables that the Physical Therapy group was sponsoring. I had no idea what it was and found out that they would do some post race stretching for you. SCORE! What you do is that you climb up on a padded massage table and they stretch out your muscles. The guy who was working on me said that this is a common thing after bigger races. He also said that the first race that you run like this is always the hardest and once I had today’s over, the next one will be easier. I don’t know if he went to class and learned to say things like that, but I liked him! After the stretches, I asked someone to take my picture and when I looked at the picture it looks pretty bad. I was looking straight into the sun and it seems like I don’t have any eye balls at all! But guess how I did? I came in second in my age group. Oh yea….
After the race today.
Now to find someplace to change into my swimming suit and meet my friends for dinner. There was a total of 7 of us today kayaking and the water and scenery was perfect.
Life is Good!
We didn’t have to do much paddling and we spent about 5 hours on the water.
So here is my photo of the day. I stayed back to get the picture of some of our group on the water this afternoon. Now I had to really paddle to catch up with them! 