Run Wild 5k

Honestly I can't believe this is my first race recap.  In all fairness, though, this is the first race I've done since starting this blog...and I did abstractly write about a spring 5k earlier...but yes, I love amateur races.  In April  during a trip to Utah I did the Salt Lake Half, which is one of my favorites but this time I was only 2.5 months post partum and I really felt the altitude as I had only been in town a couple of days prior to race day.  Two weeks later my best little bro and I did the Provo City Half Relay (yes, half of a half) which was SUPER fun, and Bishop even did a 5k while I was out of town (it was put on by his work and at least half the ward did it.  I'm totally impressed he did a race completely of his own volition).  If I don't have some race lined up in the near future, I truly get a bit of anxiety about it :)

But one of my favorite types of race is a holiday one. Ideally I coerce as many members of my family as possible to participate with me, though I'm trying to learn not to FORCE the issue as I'd like holiday races to become a fun tradition in our family rather than a drag. Anyway, despite my issues with the summer heat of Houston I found a 4th of July 5k! The Run Wild 5k. It was perfect: close to home and early-ish (7:30...could have been earlier, really, for better weather). Unfortunately Bishop had to take part in an already established ward tradition of pastries and flag raising, but, as consolation for the fact our family tradition was being usurped by a ward one, he kindly offered to take the children to that and let me have my solo 5k outing. Not ideal, but not a terrible solution either, even with the stipulation that I head to the ward outing after the race.

It was relatively well organized (though parking was atrocious). Packet pickup the day before was smooth sailing (as smooth as can be expected with three small children in tow at a triathlete store...), t-shirt sizes were plentiful, swag bags were mediocre. Race morning I woke up sick with a cold but heeded the 'neck up' rule and went for it anyway. I arrived to the race early only to find, after circling for a good while, I had to park a solid half mile away. As I'm getting out of my car I hear the gun go off and think, "Awesome. Oh well, it's chip timed." I cross the starting line with all the walkers at the back and weave my way through, constantly pulling back because I discovered my cold wasn't quite as 'neck up' as I thought and my lungs started protesting (not to mention I didn't have time to make my customary stop at the port-o-johns). 'I'm not trying to PR, I'm not trying to PR, I'm just here to have a fun holiday race' was my mantra as I began to feel stifled by the 7:45am heat. Crossed the finish line, raced to the potties (bad idea - the humidity was WAY worse in there), grabbed some water, got sidetracked by the free scrambled eggs being served, ran back to my car, felt ecstatic to realize that I had actually parked at a McDonald's so I swung through the drive through for their SKIM chocolate milk, and headed to the ward function.

We had a great day of swimming, barbecue, and even roller-bladed/biked our kids in to this big outdoor park where the fireworks were supposedly awesome, but they melted really fast (literally  - it was so hot) so we bailed early and watched a few of the first fireworks on the way home.  Later that night when I finally got around to checking results, I found I actually had set a personal best.  And that gave me the necessary boost to scrub my toilets and showers as stipulated by this cleaning schedule I'm following for our 8 week challenge (that ends next week!! Cleaning has been my week's daily personal goal).  Moral of the story?  Sometimes not stressing about making something happen can actually make it happen.  And there really is no wrong time to scrub a toilet (but maybe there should be...).

So sad the next holiday race isn't for a few months...but as consolation, it's a Halloween one which very well may be one of the BEST holidays to run a race.  Right up there with Thanksgiving.  And Christmas.  And New Year's...