Santa Runs Tacoma 5k

I was mean and made Jason get up and drive me to the Park N Ride so that I could bum a ride off Amy and Vaughn to the starting line of Santa Runs Tacoma.

I got there before Amy, which has happened maybe twice in the 2 years we've been running together.  I immediately panicked because I thought I had gotten the time wrong and had missed them.

This is an ongoing fear I have before EVERY SINGLE race I have ever run.

Regardless of the starting time, whenever I'm trying to get myself ready I am SURE I have remembered the starting time wrong and have missed it.

It turned out my panic was unfounded. Vaughn forgot his cycling socks (he wanted to ride his bike home from the race, 'cause why not?) and made Amy go back and get them at the house, which made her 5 minutes late.

Yep, I panicked over 5 minutes. 

We made it with plenty of time which gave me time to realize that despite the fact that I managed to forget I had left my Garmin in my purse and so by a fluke had it with me...I had NOT remembered to charge it.

Again.

Running by "feel" is not a strong point for me.

It worried me that I managed to stay about 30 feet behind Amy for the first 1.5 miles because either SHE was running much slower than normal or I was running much faster than I should have been.

I also kept getting distracted into watching the runners behind me (it was an out and back course) because there were some AWESOME costumes on the course.  I'd catch myself zoning out, which for me means slowing down because I wasn't concentrating.

Last year I remembered the last hill as this monstrous thing that nearly made me puke, so I was trying to save some energy to get myself up it...and then it turned into this tiny "blip" of a hill.

I do better running up hills than down them, which didn't help me at this race because the finish is on a down hill:)  I ended up letting a lady pass me in the last 200 meters but when another lady tried I decided THIS WAS THE LINE!  I turned on my finishing kick and discovered that I had way more energy than I should have at that point in the race.

Which means I hadn't run the race as hard as I should have.  But I didn't let that lady pass me! :)

I have no idea if this will give me an awesome race photo or not because they aren't up yet.

I probably look like I'm walking like I usually do.