I deserve to post late today

I've had a busy busy weekend. I ran that 10K on Saturday and had a brutal dragonboat practice on Sunday. I was very sore when I woke up this morning and a bit cranky but it was nothing that taking the kids to school in my pyjamas then coming home for a 2 hour nap couldn't cure. That is one extremely big benefit to being a stay-at-home mum. Not that I have ever in the past taken advantage of the opportunity. Seriously.

So, about the race. It's been less than 48 hours and everyone I've spoken to so far is sick to the gills of it so now there's you. My captive audience. So suck it up and read or just move on.
Julie and I arrived downtown with about an hour to spare so we walked around and soaked up the atmosphere. We chatted with other racers, saw people we knew and pretended to do some beneficial stretches. Before we knew it, it was time to go. With over 6000 runners it took us over 5 minutes to shuffle over the start line but once we got going, it was on. I used my mp3's stopwatch to time the 10 minutes running, 1 minute walking thing. I knew that function would come in handy someday. Well actually I didn't. I always wondered what I'd ever need it for. Well, tada.

When it came time to walk the first time I was so jazzed up with adrenaline that I wasn't ready but I knew if this thing was going to work, we had to be strict about it. Soon enough we were begging for the ten minutes to be up anyway and the one minute walks felt shorter and shorter. Poor Julie, I got really grumpy at the end. She was trying to encourage me with motivating words and all I could to was fantasize about pushing her off the course. Sorry sweetie. I didn't do it, did I? We even sped up at the last 500m so we looked like we ran the race at a really fast clip. So what that we were in the bottom 10% of 6303 people. Seeing my husband and kids in the stands with signs and cheering me on was the best feeling ever.

After the race we got our medals and hung around the food tent grabbing all the free Gatorade, water and food we could get. Well orange wedges and dry bagel halves, anyway. We checked out the awards ceremony, tried to find our race times (there was a cock-up and they weren't posted which made me very whiny) then decided to go to a pub for dinner. Yup, after the athletic triumph of our young lives, we went out for greasy food and beer. Most satisfying pub meal of all time. And we got to eat it with our numbers proudly pinned on our sweaty, stinky chests.
Special thanks to Jim who told me about the 10:1 thing and of course to Julie who ran with me and had "coffee" or shopped with me as a little known form of 10K training. Thanks to my family for putting up with all forms of "training" the last couple of months, for putting up with my negativity/defeatism and for being there for me at the finish line nonetheless. And thank you to you all for getting through another one of my self-indulgent rants. You know, when I called my blog "Karenworld" you should have realized what to expect. You did and you read it anyway.

Thanks for all your support and encouragement, you guys.

kxx