The beauty and fear of this particular race is that the last mile just happens to be along the parade route for the Manitou Days Parade. We've attended the parade the last two years with our kiddos and have cheered on the runners at the end of the race. I knew that if I had hundreds of people watching me, I would need to keep going.
My big sister came in from Illinois to run the race with me. She started running a couple of years ago and is much faster than me, so I didn't expect her to actually run the race along side me, but it was nice to have some one to go through the registration with before the race and then to be waiting at the end. Thank you, Jen, for getting me through my first race!
I was a bit worried about how the whole thing was going to go because it kind of started off disastrously. I had pre-registered for the race in April, but never received any kind of confirmation, but the payment had been taken out of my account. Jenny received an e-mail the night before with the details and I never got one. I started wondering if they actually had my registration, but brushed it off.
We got ready and headed to the race and sure enough, I gave them my name, and they had no packet for me. Apparently I wasn't the only one that this happened to because they quickly passed me along to someone else who had me fill out the registration form and gave me a bib and chip and didn't question the registration fee. So we got set and waited around for about an hour for the race to start. There were a variety of people waiting for the race to start, but most of them looked like avid runners. I had looked at the results from the previous years and had mentally prepared myself to finish last. It isn't a big race, usually between 150-200 runners. My practice run times easily put me in last place and the people showing up pretty much solidified my theory.
After a wait that seemed to take forever, they finally steered us towards the starting line. I told Jenny to head up farther in the pack because I was going to hang out in the back so that no one had to try and run around me. I had my playlist set and runkeeper ready to roll so I quickly started both of them as we were nearing the actual start. Runkeeper couldn't get a GPS signal, but I started it anyway expecting it to pick one up quickly after we started.
The race coordinator shouted the famed words, "On your mark, get set, go!"...at least I think that was what he said, I actually couldn't hear him, I just saw everyone else start running, and off we went! I knew I was running faster than I normally did but wanted to get a good start. I had set Runkeeper to tell me my pace/distance every 3 minutes. The first 3 minutes came so quickly and my pace, a whopping 0.00mph. I guess I never picked up a GPS signal because my heart, lungs and legs were definitely going much faster than that! It was amazing to me how quickly the group spread out. I knew I was near the back, but I also knew that there was at least a couple of people behind me.
I kept on running and made it to the 1 mile sign. I hadn't yet heard the 12 minute queue, so I knew I was running faster than I had before. I set a 1 mile personal record that day for sure. I was off to a good start.
There were people starting to walk up in front of me, but I just pressed on and kept running even though I was already feeling the burn in my legs from the quick start. I remember hitting the 2 mile mark where they had some water, I grabbed a cup quickly and tried to drink and run at the same time, but ended up splashing all over my face. It felt kind of nice because it was a quite hot/humid day. I couldn't bring myself to throw my cup on the ground (littering is still littering, even if there are people to pick it up!) and weaved over to the garbage can and kept on going. We were quickly on the parade route and there were people everywhere. I just happened to look to the right near the beginning of the parade route and I saw my husband, two of my kiddos and my mom. They were smiling, crying and cheering, it was really nice to see them.
We kept going on the parade route and I had my music on pretty loudly, but could still hear the cheers of lots of people. It gave me all the motivation I needed to just keep going. As we got to an area of the course where the street narrows, I could make eye contact with more people. I saw a lot of familiar faces from our church and got a lot of wonderful encouragement from my brothers and sisters from the best Eagle Brook Campus! I even got some high fives from some kiddos.
As I got near the end, I was getting really tired, but I was committed to not walking! I soon saw my sister on the sidelines and she came to run the rest with me after finishing. I know she was tired, so I really appreciated the extra push to keep on going. She pointed out the finish line to me so that I had a visual goal. When we neared the end, she ran up to get some pictures of me. I was expecting to see a big timer, but there was nothing! I ran through the finish line and immediately felt a huge sense of accomplishment and exhaustion. The volunteer at the end grabbed the chip off of my ankle and I made a mad dash to a picnic table to sit down. After I had been sitting for a while, I grabbed my phone to stop RunKeeper and was a bit surprised to see what it said. I stopped my phone at 39:15, but it had been running for a while after I finished. That meant that not only did I meet my goal, I pretty much destroyed it! I was eager to find out what my actual time was, but they had only printed out the list of finishers within the first 27 minutes. So I had to wait until they were posted online that night.
After waiting for a bit and downing some water, Jenny and I started to walk back to find the rest of my family on the parade route. We had about half a mile to walk, so it was a nice cool down. Again, I saw some familiar and friendly faces on the walk back to our spot. It was so nice to have so many people providing lots of encouragement! We finally made it back to our spot and I was met with lots of hugs and congratulatory words. We took a few pictures and then enjoyed the parade!
After the parade was over, we had to walk back to where we had parked, a little over a mile. My daughter came with us and the three of us had a nice walk along Lake Avenue as the sun set. Here she is with her bag of goodies and the beautiful sunset in the background
She's got a bit of a Vulcan mustache going on from smearing the V all over her face.
Shortly after we got back to the house and devoured some Wendy's, Jenny looked online and the results were posted. I was so looking forward to seeing how I actually did. We looked, and looked and looked some more, but didn't find my name anywhere! It was like a big slap in the face. Between my GPS not working correctly and not having my name in the results, it was like running the race was a figment of my imagination. It is a good thing so many people witnessed me do it, or I'd feel completely discredited!
I e-mailed the race coordinator and he was apologetic and said he would work on fixing it in the morning. He e-mailed me back the next afternoon and had added my results. The bib number doesn't match, so I'm still not completely confident that the results are correct, but the time seems to be close to being correct according to my Runkeeper. 38:32 was my time, almost 4 minutes faster than I had ever done it before.
It took me until this evening to realize just how insane that time was. I went for a run tonight and couldn't even do a mile at the pace I did for the entire race on Friday night. This race was a living, breathing example that if we want to do something for God's glory, He will help us do pretty much anything.
All night Wednesday night I just kept hearing this voice in my head saying "if you stay at 5.0 mph, I will sustain you". I've never tried to keep a steady pace while running, I just run and usually it ends up being around 4.5 mph. I was ready for the challenge after successfully running 2 miles at 5.0 mph on the treadmill late Wednesday night. I had no idea how fast I was going during the race since my GPS didn't work, but I ran around 4.8 mph the entire way.
I was very purposeful in my playlist for the race. I had intentionally set the song "You Know Me" by Bethel Music to be the song that was playing as I neared the end of the race. It was immensely helpful to hear the words "and nothing is hidden from Your sight, wherever I go You find me, and You know every detail of my life, and You are God and You don't miss a thing." There I was running down Lake Ave, nearing the end, people all around me, my sister running beside me, I don't think I've ever felt God's presence more. He knew right where I was that very moment, He knew that I was exhausted and yet He met me where I was and carried me to the end and I will be forever thankful.
The woman that finished in last place (at least according to the results) was very sweet. She ran a personal record that day and was really nice to me before the race started, so I want to give a shout out to her. Good job Katie! (not that she will ever read this I'm sure, but her presence helped bring me peace and I want to recognize that!)
This ended up being so much longer than I intended it to be, but I've never been very good at summarizing. I once did a report on Robert E. Lee in high school and I think my oral presentation lasted over 30 minutes...no one ever needed to know that much about Robert E Lee, I promise you.
Thanks for hanging in until the end of this post! I may have met my first goal, but there are many more to come. I'm doing a "Go For the Gold" challenge at work right now. It is a 6 week challenge with three award levels. The Gold award level requires 1800 minutes of exercise over the six weeks and the reward is a Fit Bit Ultra, I'm all over that. So I'll be doing A LOT of activity, but maybe not as much running, I've got to start working on some strength training now. Then, I'll be on to the, Dirty Girl Mud Run with some of my favorite people. My goal for that is to have fun and finish in one piece :-)
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