He liked it!

The night before a race I usually set out all of my stuff, that didn't happen and I paid for it. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, reassuring my husband that he'd be fine,  and forgetting things...my phone and my camera. Eh, happens.

We drove my car because it can be tucked into a lot of places other cars can't. It was smooth sailing through traffic and finding a parking spot. I had to laugh because my last run was a sea of white and this one was a sea of green. We were also decked out - Green shirts, green blinking glasses, tall green hat on husband, me sparkly shamrock headband and green tutu, necklaces, and my favorite were my knee high green and white socks that said "beer" on the side. Ironically, while we didn't have a camera, people kept stopping us and asking if they could take our picture. This dog was also popular.

The announcer said that there were 8,000 racers expected. I had run this race before and knew with half that many racers the course is congested and a bit narrow. Since this was my husband's first 5K, I wanted to try and help make it as good an experience as I could, so as soon as the line up was announced we went out to be closer to the front. I had a random person take this pic and send it to me. (Uh huh, I should have asked for one of us too. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.)

And then we were off! Husband's adrenaline was pumping and I pulled him back. I decided that I better pace him. We had set a time goal that I knew he could hit, but more importantly for him he wanted to run the race without stopping. I kept pulling him back and he said, "Look at all these people passing us!" I told him not to worry about it that at mile 1 we'd start passing a few, more at 2, etc. and going out too fast is a race killer. You can always pick it up the last mile if you have fuel in the tank. He did great and finished without stopping AND beating the time goal we set for him by 2 minutes!

Off to beer! As we were zipping through the line, I saw a buddy of my husband's. He was with some other buddies, wives, and kids so we all hung out and waited for the parade to start. Let's just say there's a whole lotta people watching to be had. I was talking to one of the wives and there were these guys by us from a male show here in town and how it would be funny if a regular guy went up and posed next to them. And then...

The area pretty much gets blocked off as 100,000 people descend on it. This pic my friend took gives you an idea:

It's really 6 lanes of road filled with people heading to the "epicenter" of activity which is about 1.5 miles from where we were. We made it there, walked in about 25 feet, and looked at each other and said no way. Off we went to another part of town where we could just hang out and relax on a patio with our friends.

My husband said on the drive home that he actually enjoyed the race...good news, since he's signed up for a couple other ones already by the race fairy! Hmmmm, guess I better mention those to him. :)

And, in related news to this actual blog - my tailored work pants are snug. Why? Cause my intake has been pushing 75 decent and 25 crap for about a month. My teeter is tottering and not in a good way, so I'm going to switch back to 90/10 until my tailored clothes are fitting well....I'm not beating myself up about it, but I am a bit mad because it's all about food choices. Sure the snugness took a month to appear but it will take a couple months to go away. Oh well, such is life and moving on. The reality is the battle never ends.