Fourth of July Fun Run Recap!

Woohoo, a Sunday post! Just wanted to do a little recap of the Fourth of July Fun Run that I ran this morning. This was a free, very casual race put on by our local Lion's Club. It was held at one of the parks that I normally run at, so I figured why not get up extra early on Sunday morning and join them? Yeah, I did question that decision when my alarm went off at 6:00 am, but once I got moving I was ok with it. Plus, this was my first race with Ricky Bobby, and I thought it would be a good practice run for the Whart-to-Wharf that I'll be running in three weeks.

Being that this was a run celebrating the Fourth of July, I dressed appropriately:

Picture is a little washed out, but...red shirt, white hat, blue shorts.My creative side came out and I tied some patriotic ribbon to my hat......and my shoes!

Waiting for the start, while the race official (I'm using this term loosely) described the course..."You can run this path for a mile, and then if you run from the first round-about with the Texas flag to the third round-about with the city flag - well, it was the city flag yesterday but today it's the American flag, and then you can run through this pathway..." at one point during his speech, I asked the lady next to me "Is there a finish line?" and she was all "I'm not sure" - so I pretty much decided to follow wherever the people in front of me went. Then the official pulled out a starter pistol from his shorts and BANG!!! we were off! A little overkill for such a small race, but you gotta love Texas, old men, and their chance to shoot a gun any time they can! Action shot right at the beginning of me unsuccessfully ducking a tree branch!

The path I ended up running - I did two laps around the big area and then two around the smaller, shaded area for a total of 3.1 miles - while this was advertised as a 4K, I figured with as loose as the paths were, I could just do my own distance (and no, I didn't end up running from round-about to round-about).Coming in for the finish - and this picture could mean that I'm either way ahead of everyone, or way behind...LOL, what do you think?!? Actually, since I made up my own distance, I was one of the last people to finish, but I covered more miles. AND, my time was normal, for me - 35:38 for a 5K.

Now, I did a few dumb things with this race. Somehow, I got it in my head that a 4K (which is what it was billed as) was going to be easy-peasy for me. Dur, Shelley - it's still almost 2.5 miles! I also was so focused on my outfit that I didn't wear a headband, and sweat was pouring into my eyes...not fun. I didn't bring a damp washcloth like I did last weekend, which would have been nice to blot the sweat AND cool me down a bit.

The other dumb thing I did was that I let myself be intimidated by all the other people around me and I didn't start running with my music - because my iTouch has a speaker, I don't wear headphones (I don't like them anyway), and I was worried that other people might be bothered by hearing my music. Me being me, I hit the wall about half a mile in (it's that solitary running thing), and I had to unstrap it from my arm, get it started, and re-strap it...while running the entire time. Ironically, that was my best mile time at 10:51, so apparently I'm very good at multi-tasking! Once I had the music going it was much better and I didn't think about quitting the rest of the run.

To all of my American readers, Happy Independence Day!!! And to everyone else - have a wonderful Sunday!