My First Race!!!

GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t get this stupid grin off my face and I still haven’t taken my medal off!!

Is it normal to be this excited about running a 10k race!?!? :D

I had the TIME OF MY LIFE today! I seriously did.

Every second was truly amazing and I finally had the chance to run a race that I have been planning for a LONG time.

I FINALLY got redemption for my injury this winter that put me out of ALL and ANY exercise for 2 whole months.

TODAY WAS REDEMPTION DAY, baby!!!

Check out this VIDEO recap I put together (took me a LONG time so I hope you enjoy it!!)

In this video you will find out:

• How the morning of the run went
• How the race went
• My finish time
• My placing
• Pictures + commentary galore!

And here are a few pictures…

Around 8am this morning after dropping off my bars to the finish line…

Can’t you just feel the excitement seeping out of my skin!?!?

At the start area! We were SO early, but at least we weren’t rushed!! IT WAS HOT. As in 28C/82F hot and not a cloud in the sky!

Warming up…in wine country walking the hills!!

Yea, so about them hills, eh!

Well, about 15 minutes before the race someone goes to me:

“So the hills on this route are CRAZY hard, eh??”

And I was like…ummm crap. Guess who forgot to check the route map this week!!! ME! But in my defense, the race organization didn’t even have the route posted until this week apparently. I was checking it and checking it for weeks prior to and then this week was SO busy I just forgot.

So this man tells me how hard the 10k is going to be with these ‘hellish hills’. He said there were 5 huge hills in it.

Here I was thinking that wine country would be FLAT. I was SO wrong. So so wrong.

I went to the bathroom 4 times (and could have gone 5 but I ran out of time! lol). I needed to stay hydrated as it was so hot!!! I think I drank about 7-8 cups of water before the race (over about 5 hours though).

Starting line!!! I was lucky to get near the front of the pack:

Wearing necklaces with an Ipod was a bad idea…they got tangled around my ipod cord (left pic)!!

Luckily Eric got them out after the race (right pic)!!!

My new tee my hubby bought me! :D I LOVE IT!!!!!!!! So me!!!

WINE IS THE ANSWER. WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?

bahahaha.

All runners got two of these wine glasses– I love them!

I am exhausted! So you will have to wait until tomorrow for parts 2 and 3 of the recap!!

I still can’t believe that I placed 3rd in my division, 19th out of 199 women, and 39th overall. I truly surprised myself.

I guess all of the intense cross training workouts paid off! It just goes to show that you don’t have to run 5 days a week to have a huge pay off! I think I ran once in the last 2 weeks– crazy huh??

I am just floating on a cloud right now and probably will be for a while. :D

Ok back to this…

I have totally crashed and burned tonight!

The past two weeks have been nothing short of crazy busy for me and it really hit me tonight when I got home! I need rest and recuperation!!!

See you tomorrow for race recap #2 and #3!

I will be showing you everything I ate the night before and day of the race!

I will also give you a blow by blow of the race itself and how I felt!!