This may of only been my 2nd 5k, and I may not be very "experienced" but this 5k was a train wreck and I'm declaring it the worst ever!! It was called the fast and furriest, and was for CSU's vet students. Since it was dog friendly I decided it would be monster's first 5k! We woke up this morning all excited and got ready to go. I attempted to brushed the munch and make him look handsome, and put on his zebra bandana. We packed the car full of his bed, treats, water, his leash, and all his "friends". He doesn't travel light, ever. I ate half an English muffin with peanut butter and he licked the peanut butter off my fingers and the napkin for breakfast. We took one final potty break and we were ready to go.
I stopped on the way down to Fort Collins and picked up a friend who was going to run with me. The race was supposed to start at 9 and we showed up a little before 8:40 to get our bibs since we had pre-registered (we planned to be there by 8:30, but I am ALWAYS late). We park in what we are pretty sure is the right place and see NO signs indicating that a race is going on, or where to pick up bibs. I start to slightly panic since we are already a little behind. Luckily once we parked and got out a girl went by with a dog and a bib so we figured we were in the right place. We asked her where she got her bib and head in that direction. We find where there are a few tents set up and there is a line to one, so we start standing in line. Once again there were NO signs. After getting almost to the front of the line we realize we are standing in the line to register, and that the line for pre-registered people is on the other side. We switch sides and this line moves much quicker, we get to the front give our names and they start shouting about between them. They didn't have the "swag bags" (I'm getting savvy to the lingo :-) ) put together yet, and our number wasn't included in it. I hear the guy yell for a large shirt for me, and I try to nicely tell him that I put down a small (um hello have you seen how short I am a large would be a dress on me!) he gives me a dirty look and goes back to the next person. I am finally handed a bag, but no number. I ask the guy if my number is supposed to be in the bag, and he says no someone should of handed it to me. At this point I am starting to panic because it's like 8:55, he yells back that they need my number again, and a girl yells back that they don't have it. BIG panic this time, the guy kindly ignores my panic attack so I frantically start digging through the bag just to make sure it didn't end up in there, and there it is hidden under the shirt. I grabbed some safety pins and shot the guy a nasty look. (And it says on my bib that I asked for a small so hah!)
By this time the girl I am with (btw it was her first 5k!) has her number pinned on and is all ready to go. I scramble putting my number on, poking myself in the belly in the process, and realize there is NO WAY we are going to make it back to the car to drop off our bags. A very nice lady at one of the tents agreed to let us stash our bags with her, thank goodness (only positive of the day)! We dash over to the start area, find a place we think will be good to start, and get our phones/earphones all set up just in time for them to tell us that they are moving the start. Grrr it was a little frustrating, but we figured oh well. We get over to the other side of this oval thing where the new start is going to be, get to where we think is a good place to be again, and are standing there waiting to get going. We ask this guy in a dog suit that was supposed to be leading us (he ended up not because he was too drunk... ) if we are facing the right way he gives some unintelligible answer so we start asking others around us, and nobody knows. A guy with a megaphone comes over and says something that no one around us understands, we stand there for a minute and then see people start shuffling so we all assume he said we were going to be running the other direction. We moan and groan, but join the shuffle to get towards the front since we are now at the very back. Not 2 seconds after we find a new place he announces that no we aren't changing directions he just needed everyone to scoot back behind these 2 cones that no one saw. More groaning, more shuffling. We find another new spot for the 4th freaking time. By this point in time Partner is freaking out because everyone is packed in super tight and people/dogs are running him over so I'm trying to keep him close by/calm. In the process of doing this my headphones turned into a GIANT knot, seriously I think someone was tying them in knots while I wasn't looking.
It's well after 9 now and they finally start us and we are off like a herd of turtles. I expect to head off through campus, but instead we start running around this damn oval. I think ok we are just heading back to the other side where we were going to start and then we'll head out on that side.... NOPE we pass that point, and pass where we started, and by this point I'm pissed. We are fairly convinced that we are just going to be running around this stupid circle for the next 3 miles. I look down at my phone to see how fast we are going/how long the distance around this stupid oval is and the time is running on my running app, but the distance says 0.00 WTF!!! I start freaking out/getting angry and the girl I'm running with starts to panic a little because we needed to be watching our pace to make sure that she would get a fast enough time to get into my heat of the Bolder Boulder. If I hadn't been so confuzzled from everything going on, it would of been smart to stop the app and start it again, but the thought that crossed my brain instead was what the hell else is going to go wrong!
Just as we were about to say fuck this race I'm not running in 10 circles, we saw people start to head off away from the oval and through campus. THANK YOU BABY JESUS! I felt like we were running at a pretty good pace, but I had no clue our distance which I didn't like. I figured the miles would be marked along the course though, so I wasn't too worried. My legs weren't feeling very good, and I was having a hard time finding a grove, but I just kept trucking looking for mile markers. At this point I don't know why I was expecting anything to of been set up for the race. Around one corner I look at my phone and it says 10 minutes, and I think uh-oh we haven't seen a mile marker. We keep trucking along and by 12 minutes I'm thinking we have to have gone a mile by now! At 14 minutes there is a water station so I'm thinking we must be half way, and were booking it! I started feeling pretty confident thinking we were going way fast and that I was finally feeling pretty good. Yep that didn't last long.
About a minute later we get to a corner and there is a lady cheering (because the course wasn't marked so people stood at corners and directed us) and saying your half way you can do it! Ugh not booking it like I had thought. At this point I tell the other girl with me that if she is feeling good she should go ahead and go faster to make sure she gets her time. She is in MUCH better shape than me! She picked up her pace a little and is ran a little ways in front of me the rest of the race. I am minding my own business jogging along thinking I am feeling pretty good, but wishing I had a person to pace myself with when all of a sudden BOOM!!! I don't exactly know what happened, but I went from trying to find a good race mindset to sprawled out on the ground with my phone in one place, the case in another, my headphones in my hand (which I spent ALL race messing with because they kept falling out of my ear because of the knot), and the dog leash on my foot. I was big time embarrassed! And I had scared the crap out of my dog so I was really glad the leash ended up stuck on my foot otherwise I would of spent the rest of the morning chasing him trying to catch him. I picked up the pieces of my phone and the leash and started running again. Btws of all the places I could of biffed it I did it right by the soccer fields where there was about oh 200 to 300 air force people doing workouts... I'm good like that.
I biffed it at about 20 minutes, so I am guessing that I was at about the 2 mile mark. I spent the next minute or so trying to run/put my case back together on my phone which was no easy task. I was freaking fed up with my headphones so I was just going to not listen to music the rest of the time, but I decided that I needed music. It was a beautiful day and the sun was out, but we had only been counting on it being in the 50's and by this point it was HOT. After I biffed it I just couldn't get my grove back I was hot, I was tired, I was getting seriously thirsty, and I was over this stupid train wreck race. I saw the next corner headed back towards where we started so I started thinking thank god I'm almost done with this thing. Once I got close enough to the oval where we started I saw people were running around it and my only thought was if I have to go around this stupid thing more than once I am quitting! I quickly realized that the finish was at the end of one more lap around it, but I had no steam left and didn't feel like I could even do one more lap. I was huffing and puffing and I seriously had to pee. It was the longest lap of my whole freaking life and I don't even know how long it was (it was definitely bigger than a normal size track oval, but I don't know by how much). I almost stopped to walk twice in that last lap, but I kept telling myself JUST.KEEP.RUNNING no matter how slow my legs got I didn't want to walk. I felt like crap and figured that this time was going to be way slower than my last race time, and I was bummed but at this point I really didn't care I just wanted to finish and not walk. I FINALLY got to the finish line and saw the clock read 30:13 I seriously couldn't believe it! There were 3 timing strips though and I'm not sure which one was the official finish so my time was somewhere between 30:13 and 30:17.
After finishing the only thing on my mind was finding a bathroom! I don't pee in port-a-potties, end of story. When I first started dating the bf I shocked the crap out of him because I peed in a parking lot, in broad daylight, in the middle of Scottsdale because I refused to pee in a port-a-potty at the Barrett Jackson. But today I didn't care all I knew was I had to pee and I had to pee NOW. It was my only option so I made an exception to the rule, but under any other circumstances there would of been no way. The thing was super tippy and I was worried it was going to fall over so I bolted out of there with my pants like half up and all crooked, but at least I didn't pee my pants. We hung around and ate a few oranges and got the pooch a treat, but then we decided we were ready for breakfast and mimosas :-) We headed down town filled up on some seriously yummy grub, and did a little shopping. I dropped my friend back of where she had stayed the night and headed home with the pooch.
The race was supposed to be "officially" timed with timing chips, but I realized when I got home that there was no timing strip at the start so I don't know how that is going to work. I also tried to find where the results will be posted, but had no luck. After seeing what a train wreck it was I'm not surprised though! I just hope they are posted somewhere so my friend can use it as her qualifying time! She hauled booty! She said she wasn't sure what her time was, but she was at least a minute ahead of me and I'm guessing she did it in under 29 minutes. Even though the whole race was a mess from start to finish and everything that could of gone wrong did go wrong I am excited that my time was faster. I really wanted to get under 30 minutes and if I hadn't biffed it I might of had a chance, but honestly I'm just happy I finished without walking! I definitely need to do some serious training in the next month to make it through the Bolder Boulder with a half decent time (or just to make it)! No more skipping workouts, and I definitely need to do some dreadmill work to work on my pace. Definitely not how I saw the day going, but at least I got a run in :-)
my hair is all jacked up and I have a stupid expression on my face because I was trying REALLY hard to keep my eyes open in the bright sun... and of course Partner is not looking at the camera what else is new
And after the whole stupid experience all I got was this super ugly shirt! Haha when I saw it all I could think was of course...
And the monster is still sleeping
Hope you all are having a wonderful Saturday!
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