Damn, I'm slow. :) Ran the first two miles then this woman, Ann, came up and started talking to me. We ended up chatting up until the last mile. It was awesome. I know it helped my time and took my mind off of running. She was a very neat lady and sounds like those of you who will be at Loveland Lake to Lake will meet her!

Right around the last mile, I lost it. I don't know if it was being sick or forgetting the gel or general wimpiness, but Ann went on ahead and I had the epic battle of run vs. walk waging in my head. Of course, I never was going to walk because I knew I didn't have that far to go, but jeepers. It was funny because I do what I call "body checks" when I want to walk. I try to listen to my head, then listen to my body. If it's my head, I keep running. If it's my body, I'll walk for 30 seconds or so. So far, it has yet to be my body that wants to stop. But I did a body check and my mind was saying "Forge ahead" and my body wanted to stop. But, I told my body "this is a race, shut the hell up" and kept running (albeit slowly). The finish line took forever to come, but it finally did.

This race was pretty much for training, so I did fine. If it were a big race for me, I'd be better trained for it and that would resolve most of my issues. But I think I should have remembered to take my gel. I'm proud though, because I definitely left it all on the course

When a fellow asked me for my timing chip, I bent over to get it and almost lost my oatmeal, but I held on to it and stumbled to the water tent (of course there had to be hundreds of spectators between me and the tent). Walked around, stretched a little, went home.


Being slow. ;) Seriously, being sick, not being fully trained for it. I'll tell ya though... I should get Ann to run some more races with me. I think I definitely would have been slower without her to talk to!


This race is very well organized and the course is just awesome. I would definitely recommend any of the distances (5k-marathon) to anyone!