I used to wonder why people drive miles to go and ran a race, I thought people were crazy. First you pay for the race, then you drive in my case 6 hours (it is a 4 hour drive but you have to add kids to the whole story) find a place to sleep, ran 6.2 miles and then drive back. That is so crazy, you would think there were no races in St Louis! and in fact there are plenty…on a given Saturday, there are about 5 or so races happening near me!
We arrived on Friday late night, slept and on Saturday morning Shelley came to pick me up. When I was doing my Masters, I had to come up with a project for one of my classes and I started a running group and that is how Shelley and I became running buddies. I miss her! I miss running with her on Saturdays. Yes, that is why I registered for this race so that I could do it with Shelley. It has been proven though that we ran faster individually. 🙂
1192 people participated in this race. The weather was perfect. We started raining and even before we reached the first mile, I was already dying. We both were running faster than our training times but still, I was like, seriously. I was wondering how I was going to run 5.2 miles more. Well, we ran, talked and ran and we did it in a 10:17 per mile pace, slower than the last time we both ran individually. (Maybe if we didn’t talk).
It was awesome to see Shelley and catch up with her. We also got to see my Dad and he seems to be doing well. I think I should now start training for the other race that we usually ran together…the half-marathon! I am tired just thinking about it but I am determined to train well for it.
Life happens!! 