I survived my first post baby race!

The tale of the race starts the night before. The race was at 7 am (yuck!) so the kids and I spent the night at my parent's house so my mom could watch ( hopefully) sleeping kids while Dad and I raced. I slept in the spare room with Bryson. He has not slept in our room in months and apparently he is quite the night owl. He woke up 2-3 times and just sat in his bed talking and cooing and giggling to himself then went back to sleep. The first time, it freaked the crap out of me because I just woke up to these little noises. 

Needless to say, I did not sleep well and waking up at 5:45 was extremely difficult. Whose glorious idea was this again? Oh yeah, mine because it was free and would be a good race to start with post baby. At least, in my head; the reality on the morning of looked more like this: 

if that isn't the picture of alertness I don't know anything( voice dripping sarcasm)

Alianna, my early bird was, of course, up and wanted to take a picture of us and we were off. 

We're soo hot right now

Obviously, this was a Halloween race and they said come in costume so I was Aurora. We show up and there are about 25 people milling around...no costumes. There is one guy that I believe is some sort of 80s obscure character with a mustache and fro, but I'm not cool enough to even know what he's going for. Now I am getting nervous because I will stand out not only because I am slow as molasses and this is all air force people who will blow past me, but I will also be that slow as molasses girl in the weird pink sparkly skirt.  Luckily some other characters arrived just before the race so I was less nervous including Minnie Mouse, Jesus, Superman and Wonder woman (they become important later on).

The race starts and my dad says don't wait for him. I thought, "don't wait for you? I just had a baby 3 1/2 months ago, don't wait for me" But he has a bad knee from an injury years ago so I actually did pass him fairly quickly. 

The one thing I always have when running is headphones. I know that's lame and "real runners" just follow their bodies instincts, but I never claimed to be a real runner. ON long runs, I like books on tape, on short ones I pump up music in an effort to make me faster. I think all it really does is drown out the sound of my labored breathing so I don't think about how I am slowing dying : ) So of course, on my first race, I forgot my arm band and headphones. I still held my phone and about half a mile in I couldn't take it anymore and turned on my music anyways. Everyone else would just have to hear my music too. Maybe it was a good warning for them, " Oh crap, I hear music coming up behind me, it's that weird girl in the sparkly skirt. " Like my own Jaws theme...

So the run was out a mile and a half then turn around and come right back.  At the turnaround, there was a water station. I got some water and realized how good I was feeling. Maybe it was just that there were no hills( like around my neighborhood) or adrenaline from the race atmosphere, but I was rockin. So I picked back up and blew past Wonder Woman and Superman ( who was 6'4" and built like superman) Score! I don't suck too bad if I am passing half the Justice League. 

This is also when I started getting really nervous because I wasn't seeing my Dad. This was out and back and curved around the flight line so I could see everyone still coming and I didn't spot him. If you remember, he sorta stuck out: 

gotta love him

About half a mile before the end, Superman blows past me. Apparently he had been holding back, and try as I might I couldn't keep up with those ten mile legs. I almost started walking, but this was where all the superfit humans who finished long before were standing and watching us lesser beings cross the finish line and my pride wouldn't let me walk by them. To be fair to the superhumans, they were all super nice and cheering me on, which also helped.

I heard my Dad's voice yell " Pass her Maggie!" ( there was a girl just 10 feet in front of me) My first thought was " OH good you're not dead" the second was " Are you freaking kidding? I'm doing good to not walk!" Apparently, he had tweaked his bad knee like a 1/2 mile into it. Lame.

Gack! Scary but super happy!

I finished in 28:40. The only other 5k I ran was last 4th of July with ArJay and I finished in like 31 minutes, so I was just aiming for under 30 minutes. I was thrilled that I was almost 3 minutes faster. I also had negative splits ( that means each mile was faster than the one before, which is what you aim for). It was a lot of fun and you can't beat a free race. They do it every month, so I'll be back and maybe I'll beat Superman next time. Although there might be some truth to the Clark Kent thing, I Don't think I'd recognize him without his cape.....