Race Report: Race for the Cure
I have run or walked in the Race for the Cure every year since 1999. In 2001 I even ran it twice: once in Richmond VA in the spring and then again in Seattle in September after I moved here. The last few years I've walked with a team of friends from work, organized by one of my former co-workers who is a breast cancer survivor. This year, however, there's no office, thus no office team, and I almost forgot about the Race. Fortunately, Riona mentioned it on her website, so I just made it in.
The event is always a moving one, with the survivors in their pink shirts and pink signs for those people the runners are celebrating and remembering. The race itself went much better than I feared that it would. I didn't exactly prepare for the run (dinner the night before consisted of part of a bloomin' onion, beer, and chips), but once I got going I felt pretty good. As always with a 5K, by the 2 mile mark I had started hurting and kept the internal monologue up of "it's only 8 more minutes; you can do anything for only 8 minutes" counting down the number of minutes I thought it would take me to finish. I ended up finishing in 22:31 (by my watch), which has to be a PR. My pace was ~ 7:15, which is about as fast as I've ever run anything. Jeff had a good race as well finishing ~ 21:30 (sub 7 minute mile pace).
Any complaint at this event feels really petty (and it is), but I'm getting really fed up about the handkerchief situation. Every year, Ford, one of the sponsors of the race, makes a handkerchief for the race. Every year they get prettier and prettier and I look forward to my new one. The last few years, however, they have become an elusive prize. The way the Seattle race is organized is there is a women's only 5K run (big crowd), a coed 5K run (bigger crowd), and a 5K walk (huge crowd; the majority of the attendees do this). (There are a few smaller races as well including a wheelchair race and a 1 mile walk, but they don't make up a large percentage of the people at the event). After Jeff and I finish our respective races we head down to the area where the post race snacks are and the sponsors are giving away free stuff and I'm excited to get my hankie (which I've already seen on several people; it's cuter than ever). We get to the Ford tent and the only thing they're giving away is water; they ran out of the handerchiefs long ago. This really burns me up. There were a lot of people at the race, but it's this big every year; it's not like the bagel people ran out of bagels or the Yoplait people ran out of yoghurt. Why the shortage of hankies? I'd understand if it was something for survivors only, but most of the handkerchiefs I saw were on walkers in white t-shirts, who got all the hankies while I was busy racing.
I said it was petty. Maybe some Yoplait will sooth my feathers.
I have run or walked in the Race for the Cure every year since 1999. In 2001 I even ran it twice: once in Richmond VA in the spring and then again in Seattle in September after I moved here. The last few years I've walked with a team of friends from work, organized by one of my former co-workers who is a breast cancer survivor. This year, however, there's no office, thus no office team, and I almost forgot about the Race. Fortunately, Riona mentioned it on her website, so I just made it in.
The event is always a moving one, with the survivors in their pink shirts and pink signs for those people the runners are celebrating and remembering. The race itself went much better than I feared that it would. I didn't exactly prepare for the run (dinner the night before consisted of part of a bloomin' onion, beer, and chips), but once I got going I felt pretty good. As always with a 5K, by the 2 mile mark I had started hurting and kept the internal monologue up of "it's only 8 more minutes; you can do anything for only 8 minutes" counting down the number of minutes I thought it would take me to finish. I ended up finishing in 22:31 (by my watch), which has to be a PR. My pace was ~ 7:15, which is about as fast as I've ever run anything. Jeff had a good race as well finishing ~ 21:30 (sub 7 minute mile pace).
Any complaint at this event feels really petty (and it is), but I'm getting really fed up about the handkerchief situation. Every year, Ford, one of the sponsors of the race, makes a handkerchief for the race. Every year they get prettier and prettier and I look forward to my new one. The last few years, however, they have become an elusive prize. The way the Seattle race is organized is there is a women's only 5K run (big crowd), a coed 5K run (bigger crowd), and a 5K walk (huge crowd; the majority of the attendees do this). (There are a few smaller races as well including a wheelchair race and a 1 mile walk, but they don't make up a large percentage of the people at the event). After Jeff and I finish our respective races we head down to the area where the post race snacks are and the sponsors are giving away free stuff and I'm excited to get my hankie (which I've already seen on several people; it's cuter than ever). We get to the Ford tent and the only thing they're giving away is water; they ran out of the handerchiefs long ago. This really burns me up. There were a lot of people at the race, but it's this big every year; it's not like the bagel people ran out of bagels or the Yoplait people ran out of yoghurt. Why the shortage of hankies? I'd understand if it was something for survivors only, but most of the handkerchiefs I saw were on walkers in white t-shirts, who got all the hankies while I was busy racing.
I said it was petty. Maybe some Yoplait will sooth my feathers.
posted by Tricia at 11:29 AM
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