ChocolateFest 5K

Since I plan on running a half marathon next weekend, I decided to do 2 shorter runs on Friday and Saturday. Friday was an easy 5 miler after work at 8:19 pace. I had decided not to run too fast because I was planning on running a local 5K on Saturday morning.

I woke up at 6AM Saturday morning and looked out the window to see if the weather was OK. It was wet on the ground but no rain. A quick check of the weather radar on Weather.com showed no more rain on the way. So I woke up Katelynn, had some quick breakfast and off to Burlington we went. Katelynn was going to be my partner in the race.

The race was called the Chocolatefest Run (or Chocolate Chase, not sure) and was the kick off to Chocolate Fest in Burlington. Burlington is know for a few things and one is that it is called Chocolate City, USA because it is the headquarters of Nestle. I know Hershey, PA might argue with that but that is for the 2 of them to duke it out. Burlington is also where the International Liars Club is but that is a different story.

The weather at the start was about 50F and windy, not great for stroller pushing. I saw 3 other people that were going to push jog strollers so that was cool. After a 1 mile warm up, the race started with a horn. After a quick lap around the High School, we head off on a trail for an out and back. It is great pushing a jog stroller when you are running with the wind, but when you are against it, it is like pushing a parachute. At about 1 1/4 miles into the race, we go down the bike path directly into the wind for about 1/2 mile until we turn around and head back. That was a struggle and I knew there were about 4 or 5 others just behind me. The nice thing about a turn around in a race is that you can see where you are in a race, the bad thing is that is slows you down.

I get to the turn around and realize I am in 10th place overall! Now I am running with the wind so I pick it up a lot and take off on the group that was just behind me. The course has a lot of turns which makes it tough to run with a jog stroller, but no worries. I see ahead of me the top 2 females battling it out and they end up finishing within 3 seconds of each other. I finish up still in 10th place in 22:34, 3rd in my age group. Only the top runner in the age group gets an award though.

Katelynn had a lot of fun on the run and on the 2 mile cool down, we had to stop and watch a train for awhile. These are important things to 3 year olds. She just relaxed and enjoyed her after race banana.

I came home, cut the grass, and now it is time to relax. I may even take a short nap.