With the approaching deadline, the hubs and I thought that we should try to fit in a couple actual races to get a good gauge of our time. I mentioned this to Cindy and she suggested a Turkey Trot* and sure enough there was one sponsored by GRPS in downtown Grand Rapids. We signed up and were all excited. Myself more so that Kyle because it was my first official "Race" since the epic disaster that was the 2008 Metro Health Marathon Relay. (See 2009 ankle surgery for details) The week before had turned out to be unseasonably cold even for Michigan with lows in the teens and highs in the 20's. We grumbled/laughed about it but didn't cancel. We just bought some cold weather running gear at Target and made plans for Grandma and Grandpa to watch MB in morning. Well, Ol' Mother Nature decided it would be HILARIOUS to send the first real snow storm of the year the night before and morning of the race. Like winter weather advisory and everything! About 3-4 inches of snow fell between midnight and 6am. Still, we didn't back out, we were going to do this!
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| Ready to go! |
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| Sleepy but kinda ready to go |
The snow had mostly stopped by the time the race started but boy was it cold. TMI ALERT! I get really sweaty when I run so I was just in compression tights, shorts and a long sleeve shirt, with a hat and gloves. I was initially freezing my nubin's off but knew I would warm up quickly. The streets where we started weren't THAT bad. The asphalt had enough traction that you could generally get a good grip on the road. Grand Rapids also does it's best to heat the street and sidewalks with steam so they were about 40% clear of snow. Feeling pretty good, we kept up our run/walk/run pace up through the first mile. Then the problems started. With Grand Rapids being a pretty old city, there are a lot of brick roads. They don't really plow the narrow, old brick roads. And brick is slippery. Very slippery. And after the ridiculously slippery brick, there was treacherously slippery smooth concrete followed by some more slippery concrete. After almost causing ourselves and each other serious bodily harm several times, we decided that for safety reasons we needed to walk. We walked the next two miles, running when we felt we safely could which wasn't much. When we rounded the last bend to the finish line, we were back on asphalt and started running again. In the end it was kind of a bust but I ended up having a really good time. I got to spend the morning with my incredible hubs, laughing and trying to not fall flat on our backs and we got a T-shirt. After the race we stopped and got Starbucks and had the rest of the day to spend with our wonderful family. So I'm going to give this race a D- for conditions and a A+ for experience. It was fun and I plan on doing it next year again!
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| I finished my first "real" race! |
As for regular runs, now that I'm done with the class I was taking (THANK GOODNESS) I'm going to start pushing my mileage up and get this thing done! Oh, and maybe get new shoes.
The countdown is on friends, We can do this!!!
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| Awww Aren't we adorbs |
* For those of you who don't know, a Turkey Trot is a 5K on Thanksgiving morning.
