Since my birthday is on Labor Day weekend, my request was that Jason would do a 5K race with me, a really great race, as a birthday present to me! I found this race advertised on www.runningwall.com and decided that since it was on a Friday night it would be fun to travel to Des Moines, get a hotel, do the race and then just enjoy a 24 hour period of time without children. Jason booked our hotel at Drury Inn in Des Moines. A great hotel by the way. We had a fabulous room. There was a hot tub and pool at this hotel so we were able to spend time in both of those before and after the race.
The race was in Ames, Iowa and started in the parking lot of a mall. The weather was super muggy and around 80 some degrees. I was almost dreading running because of the humidity and hoped it would cool off even more, but it didn't. It was such a great feeling to finish this race because it was one of those that I wasn't sure I could run the entire way or finish.
Jason did an amazing job on this race and as a result got a new personal record. He finished this race in 26:15 and was 7th of 20 in his age group of 40-49. He was 51 of 109 Men and 74 of 241 people overall.
My final time was 29:13 and I placed 11 out of 37 in my age group of 30-39. I placed 39 of 132 Women and 110th of 241 runners overall.
 |
| Here we are before the race taking a picture of ourselves. We were on our way to the hotel. |
 |
| A picture of our room at the hotel. |
 |
| The other part of our room. |
 |
| Free pop all day as much as you want in the hotel lobby. |
 |
| Free popcorn all day as much as you want. |
 |
| Jason and I right before our race. |
 |
| Our race numbers |
 |
| Taking a picture of ourselves right before the race. |
 |
| Our timing chips on our ankles. |
 |
| The leader of the race. |
 |
| This is Alvin Ravenscroft from Ames, Iowa who is 77 years young and has ran in hundreds of races over the years. I had to have a picture with him because he helped me finish this race. I saw him up ahead of me and thought that I should be able to catch him, however he was so fast that it took me a good mile to catch him. Then his pace seemed to match mine and I was running next to him for the rest of the race. At one point I felt that I was running too fast and it was so hot outside so I started to walk for about 5 seconds, and had mentioned that I wasn't feeling well. Alvin stopped, turned around and said, "Are you okay?" I told him I was, just felt super warm and a little sick. He then said, "Just keep going, You can do this." At this point I had renewed energy and was able to run with him all the way to the finish. It is because of Alvin that I finished this race. |
 |
| All the pizza you could consume was at the end of the race! |
 |
| Lots of cookies of all types from Cookies and More! |
 |
| A final picture of us taken today on our way home from our mini trip. We had a great time! This is my last day at age 38. |
6 comments:
You guys look so fit and great! I loved the picture of the 77 year old man. I wish I was able to do something like that. That's cool that he helped you along.
Congratulations to both of you for doing so well.
What a fun thing to do for your birthday! Happy happy birthday to you!!!
Happy Birthday! What a way to spend it. Good job to both of you!
Thanks for the nice comments. It was a great race and I'm glad we had a mini 24 hours away.
I am the organizer of the race. I just found your post. Fantastic. I'm glad you joined us. The picture of you and Al is really cool. The pictures made my day.
Thanks!!
Thank you Race Director for finding my blog and making such a nice comment. I loved your race and will travel every year that it's possible for us to travel there and do your race. It had lots of nice extras and we had a great time.
Post a Comment