Then we went to Costco. McKay LOVES Costco. We didn't even have to feed him lunch when we got back to the house. Here he has a sample in one hand while he's asking for another.
Mostly thanks to the example of fellow bloggers Brandon (an old missionary companion) and his wife Marci who participated in the Newport Marathon, Suzanne's friend Megan who ran the L.A. marathon, and my sister Angie who has raced for a while, I have been running for about a month following the Couch to 5k program on coolrunning.com. I'm signed up for a 5k in Lincoln City in October, but in the meantime I'm still kind of restless. Bored in the early morning on the day after arriving, I was web surfing and found a run in Redding that very night: the Moonlight Madness 2 mile race across Shasta Dam and back.
The race started at 8 pm, so here I am, decked out and warmed up at 7:30.
It turns out that 30 minutes is a long time to wait when you are nervous about running your first race since junior high, so my dad and I walked to where we saw a deer earlier. The deer tried to hypnotize us with his eye beams, but I was focused for the race and could not be hypnotized.
There was a guy with a bag of baby carrots who threw them out to the deer to coax him closer. At the same time, Dad figured out he could cover the flash with his finger and avoid the robo-deer look. This was probably the closest I've ever been to a deer without a pane of glass between us - about 12 feet!
I finished in 17:15, which would have made me ashamed in high school, but was 12 minutes, 45 seconds faster than what I told Suzanne my time would be. It was a good experience. If I didn't have to pay an entry fee, I'd run in a lot more of these.
It turns out that 30 minutes is a long time to wait when you are nervous about running your first race since junior high, so my dad and I walked to where we saw a deer earlier. The deer tried to hypnotize us with his eye beams, but I was focused for the race and could not be hypnotized.There was a guy with a bag of baby carrots who threw them out to the deer to coax him closer. At the same time, Dad figured out he could cover the flash with his finger and avoid the robo-deer look. This was probably the closest I've ever been to a deer without a pane of glass between us - about 12 feet!
Finally it was time to start, so I ran the race.
It was harder than I expected - I haven't done more than 5 minutes non-stop running since before my mission (about 11 years) but I've been jogging for a month and I knew I could just slow down and keep going. At first my goal was to see how fast I could go. But soon my goal was to run the whole thing, not walking at all, even though it was really tempting after the first 10 minutes. This picture was taken at the end of the dam, about 1.8 miles into the 2 mile run. I was tired and sore, but I didn't walk a single step of it.
I finished in 17:15, which would have made me ashamed in high school, but was 12 minutes, 45 seconds faster than what I told Suzanne my time would be. It was a good experience. If I didn't have to pay an entry fee, I'd run in a lot more of these.
3 comments:
Good job, Gabe! Looks like you had a great race and look at all your fans that came! Love you guys!
go gabe!!! you'd probably knock the socks off of me...there is know way I could run as fast as you! Thanks for mentioning me though, it motivates me to keep going :-)
and those entrance fees really do suck, don't they?!?!
Nicely done. I've gained an appreciation for running, but no matter how long or hard the race, I always find myself thinking "I paid to do this?"
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