Aka My Happy Place
Last night was a revolutionary one for Jesse.
We were finishing up his birthday dinner and he mentioned he had gotten a few texts re: his birthday post. I hauled out my laptop and let him read what I wrote.
At first, he was touched.
He quickly moved on to…”Wait…how much do you write about me on your blog?”
I looked at him for a moment and then said, “Jesse…your mother and sister are some of the most reliable readers of my blog. Many of your relatives subscribe to my updates. You think they are doing it because I only write about myself?”
Thankfully he is not overly tech savvy, bless him.
Anyways, I am eternally grateful to his sister who provided proof that he has been mastering the “tuck and roll” from an early age.
And he’s still got it.
I digress.
I want to update you on my latest race, The Starbucks Run for Women (chosen for obvious reasons). It happened last Saturday in the quaint little city of Unionville. I can only describe it as that little town at the beginning of Beauty and the Beast where all the townspeople are bursting out of their windows and doors and shouting out “Good morning!”
Anyways, I awoke at a ridiculous hour of the morning, sped down the 401 and arrived in Unionville in time to grab my race pack, do a quick warm up and head to the starting line.
There was a 5 km or 10km option. I chose the 10 km because it was bound to be less people and if I am driving a distance, I want to run a distance!
This was a woman’s only race, so I gauged the runners and went to the front. I was standing behind two (what I can only assume to be) Kenyans and a woman who looked like she ate nails for breakfast and was wearing the tights that looked like this:
I tried to ignore the feeling I would be miserably passed, possibly lapped and tried to occupy my mind with the Starbucks coffee and oatmeal at the end of the race.
The gun went off and I started way too quickly and was in second for about the first km. Obviously I started getting passed but I was feeling great and running strong. I quickly altered my goal to finish in the top ten.
I kept a strong pace for most of the race. It was beautiful! We ran through the town and it seemed as if all of Unionville was outside to cheer us on. When we were not running near people, we were in wooded areas and by large bodies of water. Gorgeous. It was a mixture of a trail race and a road race (aka, my happy place). I kept hammering on, slowly edging past runners and moving up.
I had a good sprint to the finish line and I finished in 47:10. I had just crossed the finish line when I bumped into an athletic woman and as I started to apologize, I realized it was Catriona Le May Doan. We swapped race stories and then I turned incredibly awkward as I started gushing on about how proud Canada was to have an athlete like her, etc. I managed to pull it together for her to sign my race bib and take a quick photo.
I went to check the times board and was shocked to see I came in fourth and first in my age group.
How can this happen? Well, this is the second year of the race, so there were only 334 people in the 10 km. It also was an all woman’s race so I am not competing against males who by nature are stronger and faster runners. Most ladies were making this a fun run with the girls as well. So this will probably never ever happen again, but it felt good to have my name this close to the top for at least one race. (Check out the ages of the ladies who won! They were amazing!)
Anyways, if you are interested, race photos can be seen here. (aka, there you go, mom).
I picked up my prize and collected my race bracelet that all runner get instead of medals (girls race, I told you!) and revelled in the high “estrogenness” of the race.
To cap off the “girl power” theme of the day, I ended up at the Lululemon outlet and of course found another piece to add to my obsessive collection.
way to go!
and i love the Disney reference.
also, those tights are EPIC.
Thanks Esther. I wasn’t 100% on them, but the girl sure rocked them. She even got a shout out from the gun man!
ha! i saw one of the girls from our local roller derby team wearing tights like those. i had to take a second look. i then proceeded to try figure out if the muscle placings were accurate.