Veterans Day 5K

At the last minute, I decided to enter a free 5K fun run event, just because it meant I could run somewhere different for a change.  The weather was surprisingly humid which made it challenging, to say the least.  The first mile was the second fastest that I have ever run, at 8:38.  My fastest was 8:29 on the treadmill, when I knew I could stop immediately afterwards.  Well, I definitely peaked on the first mile, and the second and third were considerably slower.  At 28:18, I didn’t quite beat my personal best, but I did somehow take home the trophy for the third fastest female in my age group.  Get in!!!

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Wicked 10K

We signed up for this race back in the very early part of 2014 and it seemed to take forever to come round, but it was certainly worth the wait.  The pain of leaving the house at 6am in the dark and cold was immediately lessened by the sight of countless superheroes, Turtles, Minions, witches and other randomly assorted crazy folk.  Once the sun rose, the morning warmed up fairly rapidly – or was it just the glow of happiness from being surrounded by all the others who also wanted to get dressed up and run 10K just for fun (and beer)?

It will be no surprise, looking at the above photo, to know that I dressed as Batman for the occasion.  Worryingly, the husband took absolutely no persuading to be Robin, in fact I think it may have even been his idea, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that this involved wearing a ladies’ Tshirt and perturbingly small ladies’ green shorts.  One of my favourite moments of the race was when, a few metres ahead of the finish line, The Joker appeared out of nowhere and slapped us both on the back as he overtook.  It should have been frustrating, but it was a poetically perfect Gotham moment.

During the race and at the beach party afterwards, we had plenty of opportunity to admire the other runners’ costumes.  Prizes were given for the best individual and group costumes, and it was astonishing to me that this effort only came second:

Yellow Submarine

The submarine itself was made up of five or six different parts, all of which were handpainted on each side, and which came apart so the women inside could each run the race (note that the women had the difficult job of running inside massive boxes while the clearly lazier and/or less fit men just wore suits!).  This amazing effort was beaten into second place by Johnny Depp Through the Ages, which was a group of about ten people all dressed as various of JD’s film characters, plus a gigantic Headless Horseman that they had constructed and took turns in pushing along the 10K route,  Don’t get me wrong, the sight of so many Johnny Depps at once is something that will stay with me for a very long time, but I think Sgt Pepper was robbed…

Another of the more noteworthy participants was the guy who dressed as a Mexican, well, if you can call a microscopic pair of budgie-smugglers and a tiny guitar a “costume”.  In case you’re wondering where he attached his race number, it was stuck to the back of his tiny guitar (and yes, I did have to stare for a while before I spotted it).  Although he didn’t win a costume prize, he won major respect from me and a lot of other people because he finished within the top thirty out of over 5000 runners, and also because he braved the early morning cold (un)dressed like that (although it did warm up considerably for the beach party and I almost got a “Batman Tan” before I remembered to remove my mask).

There are plenty of pictures of the other amazing costumes over at the Wicked 10 Facebook page, and I recommend you have a look before asking yourself how the heck the guy in the Beetlejuice costume managed to run dressed like that?

Oh, did you want to know how well I actually did in this race?  Well, my time was 59:39.2 overall, placing me 1,488 out of 5,385 finishers.  I felt I could have run slightly faster, possibly equalling my personal best, however the start and finish lines were very crowded which certainly slowed my progress a bit.  I finished 134th out of 602 in my age group, and 711th out of 3,598 females, so I was well within the top 30% in all categories.  Most importantly, I had a great day and got to meet The Flash and KISS !!  (possibly not the real ones though.)

Lazy Bum

Well I have been really lazy recently when it comes to blogging about my running (or anything else), even though I haven’t been too lazy with the running itself!  I’ve been keeping a tally all year of how far I’ve actually run, partly to help with my training and partly to know when it’s time to buy new running shoes 😀  (which I have just been treated to!) .  I also set myself a goal to see whether I could run as far as New York before we actually visit the city at the end of this month (in fact, in eight days time…).  Having never run a lot before the start of this year (I only started running in July 2013), I didn’t know whether or not this was achievable.  However, I’m pleased to say that I managed my goal (580km) on 12th October, a full six weeks ahead of my deadline.  And here are my new shoes to celebrate (no doubt there will be more excuses for a party when we travel to New York!):

The Doors – Halloween

Slightly late, but here is the neighbours’ door for Halloween.  I’m starting to think they’re not really trying any more, considering the astonishing amount of crazy Halloween decorations you can buy in this country.  So, to give more of a flavour of how it’s done over here, these are the pumpkins that the hubby and I carved this year: