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At 6 a.m. Monday morning, I still hadn’t decided if I would be running the Delavan Fall Festival 10K that morning.
My legs were still sore from my Saturday morning long run and the Body Pump class I thought would be a good idea to take Friday night (yes, that’s what I did with my Friday night, and no, it wasn’t a good idea since I hadn’t done a lunge or squat in a few weeks and had a long run the next morning).
Luke was going to be running in the kid’s fun run, a quarter-mile run that he was sooooo excited for. So, I got up, threw on my running clothes (just in case) and went to wake Luke up.
I told him it was time to get up and get ready for racing day, with as much energy as I could muster at 6 a.m. sans coffee. He gave me a look that said, ‘What the heck are you talking about, lady,’ looked out the window and said, “Mommy, it’s not even light out yet.” I told him that this is what runners do. He reluctantly and very slowly got moving. We put on his racing clothes (which included a Transformer’s T-shirt he picked himself so he could be “fast like Bumblebee”) and his running shoes and were on our way.
We got to Delavan and I decided to run. I registered and found our friends that were meeting us there to watch Luke until Terry — whose work schedule is usually not a runner’s dream — could get there from the fire station. I stretched a bit and headed to the starting line.
Runners started in a park, ran through the downtown area and turned onto a cornfield-surrounded road. The majority of the race was on this road. We ran about two miles down the road, turned around and ran back the same road. So, once the runners in front of me turned around and started heading back, I started counting the women. I counted 11. The first three would win overall female awards, so there were about e ight ahead of me for age group awards. Not knowing how many of them were in my age group, I wasn’t really sure what to expect.
I went into the race hoping to beat my PR, which was 57:14. At this point, placing in my age group wasn’t anything I had put too much thought into, but secretly, I wanted some hardware! I finished with a time of 53:13. And while I’m still far from elite status, I was really excited about that!
At 6 a.m. Monday morning, I still hadn’t decided if I would be running the Delavan Fall Festival 10K that morning.
My legs were still sore from my Saturday morning long run and the Body Pump class I thought would be a good idea to take Friday night (yes, that’s what I did with my Friday night, and no, it wasn’t a good idea since I hadn’t done a lunge or squat in a few weeks and had a long run the next morning).
Luke was going to be running in the kid’s fun run, a quarter-mile run that he was sooooo excited for. So, I got up, threw on my running clothes (just in case) and went to wake Luke up.
I told him it was time to get up and get ready for racing day, with as much energy as I could muster at 6 a.m. sans coffee. He gave me a look that said, ‘What the heck are you talking about, lady,’ looked out the window and said, “Mommy, it’s not even light out yet.” I told him that this is what runners do. He reluctantly and very slowly got moving. We put on his racing clothes (which included a Transformer’s T-shirt he picked himself so he could be “fast like Bumblebee”) and his running shoes and were on our way.
We got to Delavan and I decided to run. I registered and found our friends that were meeting us there to watch Luke until Terry — whose work schedule is usually not a runner’s dream — could get there from the fire station. I stretched a bit and headed to the starting line.
Runners started in a park, ran through the downtown area and turned onto a cornfield-surrounded road. The majority of the race was on this road. We ran about two miles down the road, turned around and ran back the same road. So, once the runners in front of me turned around and started heading back, I started counting the women. I counted 11. The first three would win overall female awards, so there were about e ight ahead of me for age group awards. Not knowing how many of them were in my age group, I wasn’t really sure what to expect.
I went into the race hoping to beat my PR, which was 57:14. At this point, placing in my age group wasn’t anything I had put too much thought into, but secretly, I wanted some hardware! I finished with a time of 53:13. And while I’m still far from elite status, I was really excited about that!
Just before the kid’s fun run began, results were posted. I looked at my name and saw “1 25-29” next to it. I had placed first in my age group! I later looked over the results a bit more carefully and saw that there were only seven women in my age group, but I was still stoked!
We walked over to the kids run, which was on a nearby paved trail. Luke kept telling me he was going to “try really hard to win the race.” Once it started, I went into full mom mode, hoping he wouldn’t fall or be too upset if he didn’t “win.” He didn’t fall. He finished somewhere in the middle of the pack, received his ribbon, looked at me and said, “Mommy, did I win?”
“Everybody got a ribbon, so everybody won,” I responded.
He then started jumping up and down saying, “Yay! I won!”
He was very proud of his ribbon. He spent the rest of the day showing it off and telling anybody who would listen about his first racing experience and how he couldn’t wait to race again.
I think I may have created a racing monster!
Holly Richrath is a reporter at Times-Newspapers. She shares the juggling act that is her life and her quest for sanity in her blog “Mom on the Run.”
