Sunday Runday: The Aloha Run

Last week I told you the PR I got in the Grape Day 5k wouldn't last for long.  I'll get to that, but first, this is the story of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad race.

When we moved, we ended up moving near one of the women in my running group.  She came up with the brilliant idea that we should run The Aloha Run together and we could carpool.  I agreed, even though it was the day after The Grape Day 5k.  2 races in one weekend!  And maybe that's why everything that could go wrong did.

The night before the race I laid out all my stuff in the guest room so I wouldn't disturb Thatboy while I was getting ready.  I set my alarm, and went to bed.  The plan was to wake up at 5:30, get to NeighborRunner's house at 6, and head to the race early enough for her to pick up her registration.

Instead, I woke up at 6:24.  My alarm hadn't gone off!  I texted NeighborRunner I was on my way and attempted to throw on my contacts and get dressed.  I realized after I was dressed, that I only had one contact in.  I have no idea what happened to the other.  I didn't have time to look for it, so I grabbed another and popped it in.  I went to grab my shoes and socks and head out the door barefoot.  Except I couldn't find my socks.  My socks I had laid out the night before.  So back into the room I went to find another pair of socks.  I ran out the door clutching socks, shoes, and bib.  Leaving behind my wallet/id/sunglasses/sunscreen.

I got to NeighborRunner's house, apologizing profusely and drove like a demon to the race.  Parking was awful because of the location, so I ended up in a lot about a mile from the start.  While I finished getting dressed, NeighborRunner sprinted to pick up her bib.  This is the time when I realized I couldn't find my socks again.  The new pair I had purposely grabbed on my way out the door.  Fabulous.  Guess who was going to run this race sockless?

I ran to the start line just as the race started.  Nothing like leaving it to the last second, right?  The race started in waves so as not to overwhelm Mission Bay.  Which was nice, it gave me about 10 minutes to compose myself before I was off and running.

I really hate running races at Mission Bay.  They don't close off the course, so you're weaving around people out for morning strolls.  It's out and back so you get to do that the entire time you're running, and mostly you're trying to figure out where to go since the course is just marked with cones.

Add that to the fact that I could feel the blisters already forming from my sockless adventure, and I was anxious to be done with this race.  The course is really flat, and as every mile passed it became clear I was going to earn another PR.

I met up with NeighborRunner at the finish - she had already finished because she's super speedy.  We walked around checking out the event before going to see our times.  We were both shocked at the results, until we realized that  for some reason they had subtracted 2 minutes from everyone's time.  My time was 25:29!  Talk about an amazing PR.  But for those of you that can do math, my actual time was 27:29.  Still a pretty impressive PR given that I had just PR'd the day before!

As for NeighborRunner, despite her terrible carpool date for the race, she managed to do pretty well too - 2nd in her age group!  I have some fast friends.