Glenn and I took a trip to Myrtle Beach over the 4th of July weekend and met my sister and some of her friends down there for the weekend. We decided to find a local race to do while we were there. We found the inagural freedom 5K and 8K taking place at the Market Common and decided to do it. I’ve actually never raced an 8K, so this would be a first for that distance. The night before when we went to pick up our packets they had live music, food and beer… and it was super fun. (Since we were on vacation though, I had a few to many drinks and woke up with a pounding headache at 5:00 a.m. to run.) Now if this were a marathon or even a half marathon clearly I would have been more mindful, but it was just a little 5 mile run for fun on vacation, so why be careful? Actually on a side note, Glenn ran his fastest half marathon a little hungover… don’t think I could do that, but he smoked that race and definetly had too many the night before. What say you? Have you ever PRed hungover?
Although we were just running it for fun and thought it would be a good start to the weekend, I of course felt nervous and the need to be competitive. The winner of the race would win $400.00 and I thought, since it was the first year for the event and pretty small maybe no one too fast would show up and I could get lucky. Well I was wrong.
When we got to the start line, I saw an older lady at the front looking like she was going to smoke us all and for some reason she looked familiar. So, I started out pretty strong and Glenn was running with me. He kept trying to pick up the pace and I was not being very strong and just told him to go already. So he left me around mile 1.5 and then after about 5 minutes decided he would turn around and run with me. At this point there were 4 women in front of me and the first 2 were not reachable for sure. Slowly but surely I got passed by 2 more women and at that point I just wanted to finish strong and get on with the day. I ended up passing one girl.. (who I later realized at the awards that she was only 14… man I would have been mad at myself if I hadn’t passed her)
So here is the cool part about the race, when they were giving out awards I could swear I recognized the lady that came in second place. She was older than someone who would usually be in the top and I was thinking man that lady is really fast for her age. Then they annouced her name and said Zola Pieterse (her maiden name is Budd, I’m sure most of you know who she is and have read that runners world article) and I immediatly recognized the name Zola from the runners world story published awhile back. I wanted to go up to her and tell her I had read a story about her in runner’s world and shake her hand, but I was too scared! When we got back to our hotel I had to google her to make sure that was her and it was. How fun! I should have just had to guts to ask for a picture or something, which would have made this post much more exciting!
So anyway I ended up coming in 6th place for females and 2nd in my age group. I think if I would have had a mentally stronger day and maybe less to drink the night before I could have taken 3rd, but that’s just how it goes sometimes! And even though Glenn stayed back with his slow wife for the day, he still got 3rd in his age group. Representing from Indianapolis in Myrtle Beach! And our first 8K time ended up at 34:40. Not bad, but not amazing! I’ll take it for a vacation race.
Happy belated 4th!
Here are a few pics of Glenn, my sister Ericka and I from the 8K.
