Mermaid Run

I got up at 6am yesterday morning to get ready for the Mermaid Run in Mountain View. Last year was my first time participating in this race. What I like about it is that it's an all woman's race and the Mermaid folks promote women and young girls to get out and be active. Oh and they give out good loot too!

It was evident that there were more runners this year by the long line of cars to get into the parking lot. Of course, maybe it had something to do with it not being rainy and cold and windy this year. At any rate, I found Mary Sue and Molly McNamara and family. Molly's Mom and Sister were racing and Molly came to watch before participating in Vineman Showdown.

After a long wait in line for the bathrooms (that's what happens when you have 1200 women racing) it was time for the 5k start, and we were off. My goal was to not push and monitor my heart rate closely. My allergies have been causing some funky stuff to take place during my workouts and I needed to be careful after an incident earlier this week at the gym. The 5k course was crowded and there were lots of mini-mermaids running. I love seeing the young girls out running but the only bummer about that is they don't really know race etiquette.  And if you know anything about how kids run, they give it everything they have and then just stop and then as you go to pass them, give it everything they have again. So you just have to be a little more alert on the course for obstacles. I told my self there would be no walking until the turn-around. When I reached the turn-around I still felt good,  I decided to keep going. At this point I realized that if I stopped running, my walk pace would be about the same as my run pace, so I might as well just keep running at my very slow pace. I knew the final stretch would be hard, because there is a small uphill and then you can see the finish line, but it is still pretty far away. As I approached, I worked on keeping my pace and maintaining my hear rate. I was excited to see that Melissa was there as well. It's always way cool to have people cheering you on, and the smofitters never you let down. I crossed the finish line with a huge sense of relief. Even though it was not a great time for me, this was the first race of the year where I ran the entire race with no walking.

33/74 in my age group and 167/411 overall. I still have my work cut out for me as all of my race times this year have been slower than last year. Hopefully my body will start to cooperate with me.

Next up, my favorite race - The Devil Mountain Run benefiting Children's Hospital.