This past saturday I completed my first race ever, a 10k! I’m not a runner. Even when I ran track I wasn’t very competitive and couldn’t run for very long distances without getting winded and all tight chested. So it was weird for me to learn that in the years since high school (and not running at all, btw) my first run wasn’t too bad. Mind you, my first run was having to pee really badly after a mardi gras parade since the port-o-potty’s were pay-to-pee (real dumb), and I had to sprint about 20 blocks with a neck full of heavy beads and bags full of beads–and still I was fine.
So I did a few runs a few weeks before the Crescent City Classic, trying to break in my Vibrams, and then just went for it the past weekend. My goal wasn’t to just complete it, because I knew I could run the full 6.2 miles, but to run the entire time. I had to take a couple less than 30 seconds breaks when the nausea became some what concerning, but overall I pretty much ran it.
I guess for real runners, it’s kind of a joke race since it’s so short. The halfway mark was a firetruck blowing its sirens with people in costumes holding handles of liquor and passing out cups. The entire second half of the race was people in the neutral ground passing out cups of beer instead of water. It was funny to watch the spectators and definitely kept me going since they were so enthusiastic, but I was not even about to drink some beer while doing that run.
The finish line was deceiving, because it feels like once you get to city park you should be done. But instead there’s this convoluted route within city park that’s something like the last 3 kilometers of the race. PLUS, it was a really shitty time to find out how poorly my ipod tracker was calibrated because it had me finishing the race a kilometer sooner than I was done. Best believe I wanted to throw my ipod on the ground for deceiving me the entire race.
But the point is I finished and I finished in an hour and 9 minutes, 5,600th out of about 15,000 people being tracked (ha!). Crossing that finish line was elating, and having a friend waiting there was even better. She was so considerate to not only have a nicely wrapped present waiting for me (a copy of Born to Run) but had this awesome spread of food and my favorite beer waiting at her house for me. too great.
I haven’t gotten very far in the book, but it’s definitely an interesting read. I’m actually pretty motivated to keep running and hopefully get better at going longer distances and running barefoot. I guess I need to find another race to run.
like black butterflies 