May the road rise up to meet you.

Race report day!

This was one of my first races here in Edmonton in 2011. Weird that we’ve been here long enough for me to have done a race 4 years in a row. This run has both 10k and 5k options. In the past I’ve done both. The first year, I hadn’t run a 10k since before Violet was born, so I followed a Couch to 10k app to get ready for it. The second year I was pregnant with Bianca, so I opted for the 5k, and last year I did the 10 again.

Note to self: always grab that race photo before the race. Running does not do nice things to Irish skin. Today’s pic is by far the best. Plus I have a better photo editing app on my phone than I used to.

This year, I signed up for the 10k but then wavered back and forth as to which I wanted to do. As of this morning I still wasn’t sure which I was going for. I finally decided, what the hell. Let’s go for it. 10k it up!

At the start line, I bumped into a friend who I knew was also running the 10k and so was kind of half keeping an eye out for. She runs the boot camp workouts that the girls and I have been going to since last summer. She said she didn’t mind taking it slow to start, so we ran the first half of the race together. It was actually kind of nice. I am typically a solo runner. Even for races, I keep myself to myself. And I do like that, but it was good to be chatting and keeping pace with somebody else for a change. We parted ways at just before the turnaround, as my pregnant ass needed to walk a bit and she is crazy fit (like, her goal is doing 32 races this year fit. Like, she just did this race yesterday and now she’s just banging out an icy-ass 10k for kicks fit) and I didn’t want to slow her up any more. Thanks for the company and the motivation, Robin!

So much ice. Definitely not the WORST I’ve seen this particular trail (it’s a paved trail, but still a trail), but there were still some pretty icy patches. I’d forgotten my spikes in the car (cause duh of course I would), but I managed just fine without them, only had to go up on the side of the trail to avoid the ice a handful of times.

This course starts with a major downhill. And since this is your basic out-and-back course, it ends on a major uphill. A hairpin-turny, super steep, “let’s add extra turns because we’d need a lot of sidewalk to get up this hill otherwise” nasty uphill. It’s such a brutal way to end the race, but I walked part of the uphill so that I’d have enough juice left to sprint through the finish (which is mercifully flat). And sprint I did. Topped out at about a 10’10” mile at the very end there.

The weather is SO NICE today. So warm. Around 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Didn’t even need my fleece-lined running top, and honestly I felt a little overdressed in my fleece-lined tights. Hard to believe that just a few weeks ago I was doing that half in sub-zero, freeze-your-ballz-off temperatures.

Teaching my young grasshoppah the ways of the double thumbs up. She sometimes prefers a superhero pose.

After the end of the race, they have a breakfast for all the runners (and the children/husbands that sort of sneak in at the end when they’re not so much concerning themselves with each person having a “ticket” per se…) in a hall at the conference center. The breakfast itself is decent (though you do kind of have to flag down a server if you want to eat or if you want coffee, because they really have no clue who has eaten already and who hasn’t and they don’t seem all that bothered), but honestly? The post-race atmosphere is sorely lacking. They did do a draw for door prizes and whatnot, but they started it so late that the majority of people had already finished eating and left, so they had to draw like 6, 7, 8 numbers for each prize. Which was just kind of sad. And there’s no music! Nothing! I realize I’m coming from a city that holds this holiday in abnormally high regard, but still. If you can’t have a band, or some Irish dancers, or free-flowing beer, could you at the very least pipe some Celtic music in over the sound system during breakfast? It’s like the saddest party ever. Although, the table we ended up sitting at was actually full of honest-to-God Irish people, so at least I got to hear a bit of a brogue over french toast. Which made it slightly better.

My cheerleaders and I were all fully decked out in our St. Patricks’s Day finest, which included DIY freezer paper tshirts, as per usual. Plus we had sweaters and crazy socks and green headbands and shamrock beads and face tattoos. We do not half-ass things. Well, I kind of half-assed Nate’s t-shirt, I just bought it at Ye Olde Navs.

All in all- a fine start to our St. Paddy’s Day festivities (still to come- actual St. Patrick’s Day with some sort of Irishy dinner tomrrow, plus a very green Baby Book Club on Tuesday).

And a fine third race to add to my goal of 12 in 12.

 

 

 

Is fear rith maith ná drochsheasamh.