On Sunday, I ran the Running on the Streets of Gold 5K in Somerville, MA with my Oiselle teammate, Jess C. Jess recently moved to Winchester from NH and we've been hitting the local races together whenever possible. I scooped her up around 7:00am so we could get there early enough to park, grab our bibs, warm up and do my hair. Wait, what?? Yes, I am currently obsessed with the side french braid into the pony tail and I can't do it myself. Jess, however, is a pro and was happy to style me up. Simple pleasures, you know? When we arrived at the race start we saw one port-o-potty on a truck, a couple of tables and nothing else. Literally. We wondered if we were in the wrong place, but after we confirmed the details on the web site we went ahead and parked. This is the first time they have held this race, so we were guessing that might have been why the crowd was so thin. That, and maybe that it's summer and people were either away or sleeping in rather than running a 5K in the heat and humidity on a Saturday morning. Go figure. We picked up our numbers, our race tees and some swag from City Sports along with our complimentary copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Runners. Nothing like a little free inspiration. We warmed up for about 15 minutes and when we got back there was finally a bit of a crowd forming around the tables. That said, they were all lined up to register, so we were guessing that our race would not be starting right at 8:00. No worries. This gave us time to do my hair and have someone take our picture.
Bird twins w/ braids
As we strolled over to the race start, we noticed the line for the port-o-pottys was really long and given the size of this race we guessed that the race director would likely be waiting for everyone so we found a shady spot, stretched, and people watched. Unbeknownst to us, this race seemed to have a super hero theme. There were several people dressed up, both kids and grown ups, in costumes ranging from the "go-to" crime fighters (ie. Batman & Superman)
A young Batman and his Mom
to the lesser known but still incredibly important heroes like these guys:
Kragle, Emmet & UniKitty from the Lego movie
(Superman flew in for the shot, too)
For a brief moment Jess and I wished we'd gotten the memo so we could have thrown something together, but got over it pretty quickly when we thought about how hot they were. I should also note that there was a guy lined up in front of us with bean bags which he was clearly about to juggle throughout the race. I'm always in awe of people who choose to add this type of element to an already challenging event. The race ended up starting at 8:25, just in time for the sun to poke through the clouds and the temp to rise about 5 degrees. Not ideal. Races are tough to manage, particularly if it's a first, so we threw the organizers a bone. We were, however, totally soaked through before the start of the race. Good times. We high fived and then we were off. One hill up, two hills up (brutal), one nice long hill down, one switchback (that was weird) and then we finished. Neither Jess nor I had a killer race. I'm pretty sure the juggler beat both of us. The weather took us down as we kind of knew it would even though we'd secretly hoped it wouldn't. Oh well, as Jess said afterwards, you can't PR them all. Ain't that the truth. After we caught our breath and cooled down, we switched our focus to the second most important part of our morning.... our well earned iced mochas.
Ohhhhh yeah.
Racing is hard. Racing in the summer time is harder. Racing with a friend makes it easier and a hell of a lot more fun. Racing with a new friend who shares your love for running and coffee makes it totally awesome.
Listen to this:
The Wyld - Odyssey
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