We're Runners!

Holy crap, it’s been a while! I really didn’t mean to slack this long. It started out with waiting for SH to get the photos of Lena and me he took at the race (which he still hasn’t done due to some computer issues he was having – must get on him again) and then I was bogged down with my project at work (more on that later) and then blah blah blah…

Anyhoo, the race was great! It started out pretty chilly in the morning, much to our disliking, but we put on our hats and gloves and packed in as much coffee as was safe – didn’t want to have to pee halfway through!

We really had no idea what to expect and were prepared for a bit of a cluster, but there really wasn’t that many people there at first when we were getting our packets and it really was pretty organized and quite the event. We got a bunch of fun info, coupons, free food and drinks AND free Caribou coffee! I prefer Dunn Bros myself, but hey, I’m not going to turn my nose up at someone who wants to give me free coffee! ;)

We were pretty amazed and excited about the adrenaline high we had that had us pumping and allowed us to only have to walk a couple short stints that we figured totaled no more than .5 mile – and that was mainly due to a side stitch that Lena developed. With how we were feeling, I wonder if we could have possibly ran the whole thing if poor Lena hadn’t been plagued with the dreaded stitch.

Our next goal is to do another 5K in the spring and run the entire thing – NO WALKING! Then it will be a 10K, I think, regardless of whether we can run the entire thing. It will be like this time – we’ll just DO IT. And THEN we’ll focus on running the whole thing. Then what? A 10 mile, and then a half marathon…

That’s the goal at this point anyway. We’ll see what happens…

So we ran, cashed in on some “free” stuff (we did pay a $25 entry fee) and then celebrated by taking a leisurely morning afterwards wandering to this cute French café with French foods (like yummy quiches and sandwiches) and the most beautiful dessert/pastry case (patisserie?) over on the Mpls side of the metro. We had a nice brunch and got a few small treats for later. Then we meandered over to a billiards store for fun (well, because SH wanted to stop there because we were in the area) and we stopped by a cute little garden center we happened upon. It was a nice wind down to our eventful morning.

I guess I’ll wrap up with a few pictures that Lena’s dad took, which was a rather humorous moment. He was standing on the side of the road an kind of hopped out with the camera and shouted “Look alive!” at us (thus the excited looks) and I swear, I didn’t recognize him at all! It must have been the fact that he’s been growing his hair out lately so it’s a bit longer than I remember and a bit grayer too. Lena was pretty amused when she found out I didn’t know that was her dad at the time. She exclaimed “What, did you think he was just some weird old guy taking our picture!?”

“Uh, yeah… I thought it was pretty funny!” In my defense there was a bunch of people (race volunteers, I’m guessing) on the sidelines throughout the thing yelling things at us like “Way to go!” “You’re doing great!” “One mile down!” “You’re halfway there. Congratulations! Way to go!” etc. So, it didn’t really seem like that much of a stretch… Anyhoo, here’s the pics I have at this point thanks to Lena and her daddy!

Us "Looking alive"!

We're runners! Whoo hoo!

Very attractive shot of us enjoying our "free" post-race bananas. Wow, I actually look like a monkey too! Blech!!

That is all for now. :)