Rubber Ducky 5K

This past week was a hard week, I still have the head cold from he!! and it's been hard to get out and get moving with very little energy.  However, I had the Rubber Ducky 5K that I was doing with a friend and although my original goal had been to run the whole course, I knew by Wednesday that probably wasn't going to happen.

I was volunteering on Saturday morning so my wonderful husband drove into town to pick up our Run Kits for us.  I was very excited when I got home to see this waiting for me!

The t-shirt is a technical t-shirt that wicks moisture which I think is great!  I'm looking forward to wearing it on my walks when in the spring I can go back to wearing just a t-shirt!

On Sunday morning my husband dropped me off at my friends house, at 715am.  I love doing races, but I do hate the fact that they all start so early and because we normally have to drive an hour or more to get to them it means an extra early Sunday morning for us :)

When we arrived at Burnaby Lake the parking lot was already getting full, after using the restrooms we headed over to the starting area where all the tents were set up.  It was a damp foggy morning, and the mist from the fog was already getting us wet, so we were very grateful that the race organizers TRY EVENTS had a warm zone set up for the runners to wait in.  There was a 20x10 tents with walls on three sides with two propane heaters running.  It was so nice!

Before we knew it it was time to go outside and get ready for the warm up.  This is when I realized that I had left my ipod in the car and it was too late to go back for it.  I usually walk/run with music and I know that I move faster with it but oh well.

My friend "L" and I getting ready for warm up.

The Rubber Ducky is a 1/2 Marathon, 1/2 Relay Marathon, 7 miler and 5K run, with a mass start after warm up.   We had tried to stay towards what we thought was the back of the line up but after the warm up was done, I looked around and realized that we were more in the centre of the pack.  I felt bad as I know how important it is to get out of the gate as smoothly as possible and I usually do stay to the back to keep out of the way.  There were quite a few hands on my back as people went around  me but oh well, after a few minutes the crowd thinned out and I felt a little bit better.

The 5K route was around the outer edges of a field and onto a trail.  It was a beautiful trail with the leaves changing color and hard packed gravel which was great, however I did have to stop a couple of times to take stones out of my shoe!  My friend is a faster walker than I am, my running is about the speed of her walking, and I eventually just told her to go on, don't wait for me.  I was able to keep her in sight for most of the way, but I came around a curve in the trail and discovered everyone was far ahead of me.  There was no-one there!

The perks of being slow, you get the whole trail to yourself!

It wasn't long before I started seeing people coming back at me, the 5K route is an out and back.  I found "L" waiting for me at the turn around and we started back together, again after a while I told her to go ahead,  I'd meet her back at the tents.  I was walking and running but I wasn't running very far as I kept coughing so hard.  Eventually I made it back to the end of the trail along the field and I could see the Finish line and the tents, and hear the announcer as he was welcoming people back.

The finish line is in sight! Sort of.

I was very touched when I made it back to the part of the trail that led down to the finishers chute.  "L" was standing there waiting for me!  She didn't want to finish without me and I was very touched that she waited for me.  We walked for a minute and then we ran it in!  I was so happy to have someone to finish with me!  We crossed the line together as we had started and that was a great feeling!

My Garmin time was 55:59, the chip time was 55:22

"L" and I with our finishers medals!

Although I couldn't run the whole distance, I was happy with my time, shaved 3 minutes off of my last TRY Events race.  I have another one in two weeks, so hopefully this head cold will finally be gone and I'll be able to do a lot more running for that one.

It was great to have a friend along for the race today.  It was great to have that support along the trail and to have someone to enjoy it with.  I think I'm going to try to get a bunch of us together for the Santa Shuffle/ Elf Walk in December.  That should be a hoot and a half!