Race #3 (May) -- 5K

My worst race ever...

...as far as my time goes, anyway.

This was the "High Fives 5K" race--free to register, open to everyone, and right her in our own neighborhood.  As I pointed out in a previous post, L wanted to run it with her friends.  R decided to run it with her friend as well, and the boys were going to run it with me.  And we invited some friends, Neighbor1 and Neighbor2 (not their real names) to join us--their mom recently broke her arm, so she couldn't exactly run a race since, as you might have noticed last time you ran anywhere, your arms sort of swing back and forth a bit while you run.

So J, S, Neighbor1, and Neighbor2 ran with me, L ran with her friends, and R ran with a friend.  S made it .6 mile and J made it 1.5 miles (though, admittedly, he rode a fair amount of that on my back).  R dropped out after about 2.7 miles, partway up the "Heartbreak Hill" of the course.  I tried to tell her that if she could make it up the rest of the hill (.2 mile), the remainder of the race was a piece of cake--only another .2 mile and all downhill.  But she had never run that far before, and was feeling like she was going to be really sick.  So her friend Neighbor3 tagged along with the remaining 3 from our group (Neighbors 1 and 2 and me), and we finished the race in about 45 or 50 minutes.

We even got medals.  (They give them to everyone who finishes in less than 55 minutes.)

But the best part was, a few minutes later, looking up and seeing my R coming down the home stretch.  She didn't give up!  She had rested for a few minutes and, once she felt imminent death had been averted, she got back in the race!

L and her friends finished too.  That was cool because their friend, who had wanted to run the race, had had surgery and couldn't run.  So the girls ran the race for her, "carrying her" by bringing her name on a piece of paper, taking photos for her on route, and picking up a medal for her at the finish line.  It was really thoughtful.

Way to go, kids!

MOJ