5K #9 was this past Saturday. And before I recap my race, here’s a little information about me.
I hate the rain.
Well, I guess that’s not completely true. I like the rain when I can stay inside and not have to deal with it. I will avoid running errands in the rain if I can help it. And while I do own umbrellas, I never remember to use them (or it takes too long to close them up when I’m getting into my car so I get wetter than if I was not using an umbrella). I’m definitely a California girl who prefers sunshine to anything else.
And of course, the forecast for race day was rain. Lots of rain.
On Friday, I went to get my race number and shirt after work. I was lucky that the pickup location was only a few blocks from work, so it was easy to get over there.
I went to bed hoping that the forecast was wrong. Or maybe that the rain would stop during the race.
When I woke up, this is what the forecast looked like.
See that dot that says Santa Monica? That’s where I was going. And it was going to be raining for a long time.
My friend Kate was also doing this race (she was going to run it so we weren’t necessarily racing together), so I picked her up and we headed over to the race area. We lucked out in finding a parking meter about a block from the start/finish line so we hung out in the car until it was closer to the start time. I took my before picture in the car because I didn’t want to get wet.
Once it was almost race time, we headed over to the start. Kate went up to the front of the pack with the fast runners and I hung back with the slow runners/walkers. It was drizzling at the start, so while I wasn’t happy about rain, it wasn’t too bad.
I’d say for the first 1.5 miles, it was drizzling with an occasional quick shower of rain. Not great, but not horrible. But right before I got to the 2 mile marker, it started to pour. I’m talking sheets of rain where it was hard for me to see. I was absolutely soaked. My clothes had water dripping off of them.
I finally finished (in under an hour so I’m happy about that) and headed back to the car where Kate was waiting for me (she wanted to get out of the rain too). I had Kate take a quick after photo of me, but you can’t tell how drenched I got.
And even though I don’t like the rain and hated being wet, I’m smiling because I did it! Not only did I do another 5K (and almost double what my goal was for this year), I did one in the rain, which is something that I never thought I’d do. I don’t know if I’d like to do another race in the rain, but if I’m signed up for one and it happens to be raining that day, now I know that I can finish it.
I can’t believe I’m done with my 2013 races. When I set the goal to do 5 this year, I thought that would be a stretch. I’m really proud of myself that I did beyond my goal. I’m looking forward to the ones I’m planning on doing in 2014. I’m not necessarily going to focus on the number of races, but I want to sign up for ones that seem like they would be super fun to do.
And of course, I’ll keep doing recaps of the ones that I do end up doing next year.
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