One snafu right off the bat is that they could not find Darcy's registration. Thank God for technology, she had her confirmation on her phone. But, it still seemed a big deal to get her a number and t-shirt. The project manager in the three of us started discussing their implementation planning and contingency planning. Did they adequately assess all of their risks? We think they have some lessons learned. There were still about 50 people in the late registration line with under 15 minutes before race time.
After my months of mentally and physically "preparing" for this day, I have to admit it was almost a bit of a disappointment. (I say preparing with a grain of salt. Admittedly, I was never 100% committed to doing what I really needed to do to run the race.) 16,000 is a lot of humanity, and when they are all lined up along a narrow city street there is not a lot of room to really bust out of the starting line. Granted, my two co-workers Darcy and Tricia and I might not have read all of the instructions. For example, I just realized about 10 minutes ago that the green dot on my race number indicated I was in the "runner" group. All the runners were supposed to line up first at the starting line. We more or less used the visual approach and wandered through the throngs of people until we found people who appeared to look more like runners than walkers. Well, we were far back in the pack away from the runners.
It took a good 4 minutes for us to even make our way to the official starting line. I know this because I started my stopwatch when we got to the starting line and when we finally crossed the finish line there was a 4 minute differential. We need microchips!!
We made a somewhat lame effort to try and run past the walking group by running in and out of the parked cars and up on to the sidewalk and back to the street. We really just found it all a bit annoying. So, we gave up and just walked the rest of the way, which still took some effort to circumnavigate the thousands of kids, seniors, and parents pushing strollers.
At about the halfway mark, there was a whole group of local high school cheerleaders holding up signs and encouraging us to keep going. We pondered whether we would want our high school daughters holding up such signage:
- Save Second Base!
- Save the TaTas!
- Bosom Buddies
- Save the Boobies!
According to my unofficial time, we crossed the finish line at 49 minutes. The race clock showed 53 minutes.
So, my first 5K was a walk and not the run I had anticipated. It's probably for the best...I know I wouldn't have actually run the course in much faster time. I may look for another 5K in the future, but will definitely check out the small towns...16,000 is too much for me. But, it is a great cause, and I'm happy I was able to contribute in even a small way.
I'm soooooo proud of you Babes! Way to go-you've come a long way from that first fateful attempt when you were a Burgen and needed a smoke and a brew just to recover!
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