Race Fever

I think it's safe to say that Zach has race fever. He wants to do races any chance he gets. Lucky for him, by the time next weekend is over, he'll have run 3 races in 3 weeks. The latest run was this past weekend. I heard something at Zach's soccer game on Saturday about a 10 mile race downtown on Sunday, and since my sister and I are training for the Des Moines Half-Marathon in a few weeks, I had a long run planned for Sunday, anyway. I was planning on doing an 11 mile run, but I wasn't really looking forward to doing that run on the same path I always run on, so I decided I'd do the 10 mile race instead. It's always more fun to run with a big group of people on a course that unfamiliar. Anyway, there was also a free kids race, so of course Zach was excited about doing that. So I got up early Sunday and headed downtown to sign up for the race before it started, and Mike and the boys met me later on.

Here are the boys cheering on some runners.

I felt good on the run. I have been running around an 8:34 pace for my longer runs, and it seemed like I was pretty much on target during this run. The last two miles I really picked it up, though, and my pace those two miles was 7:52 and 7:35 respectively. I could see Mike and the boys as I approached the finish line, and I could tell they hadn't seen me yet, but I just didn't have it in me to yell out to them. Anyway, they finally saw me, but by the time Mike got the camera out and ready, I was basically past them.

I finished the Capital Pursuit 10 Mile in 1:23:21 according to my watch, which averaged out to about 8:20 per mile. The big shocker for me is that I finished 3rd in my age group, which means of the 44 women aged 30-34, I was third. I've never been third in my age group before! I even got a $10 gift certificate to a running store for it. I finished 54th out of all 257 female runners. I was so glad I did the race rather than running 11 miles on my own. It was way more fun!

After all the runners finished the 10 mile race, the kids lined up for their race. Kids 5 and under ran 1 city block. Zach was very excited.

Here you can see Zach in his little Adidas track suit right next to the cute girl in the white t-shirt.

I was running behind Zach, cheering him on and carrying Drew. After Zach's race last weekend, he talked a lot about how he cut in front of a little girl. He's also mentioned this after soccer games, and how he cuts in front of people. So I wasn't at all surprised when I watched him cut in front of that cute little girl. You can see in this picture how happy he is about his sneaky move.

I found out later on that Zach learned this cutting in front of people trick from the movie Cars. Apparently there's a scene in that movie where Lightning McQueen and the other car (Chick, I think is his name) are racing and cutting in front of each other or something.

As I said, I was behind Zach, so I couldn't see his face during his run, but I love all these pictures of him because of how happy he looks. Mike says Zach was just eating up the crowd's attention and talking to them as he ran. What a surprise.

I really hope Zach always loves running this much. Just look at that face- pure joy.

In one of the earlier pictures of Zach you may have noticed a little kid toddling along in the race. I didn't enter Drew in the race, but after seeing that cute little girl cross the finish line, I decided to put Drew down and see if he wanted to finish, too. Lately he's really been into having me say, "Ready, set, go!" and racing with him, so I figured he might like this. He did. He happily crossed the finish line and received his ribbon. That was about his only happy moment of the morning from the time I finished the race until the time he got in the car. I still forced him to be in a picture, though.

It was a fun morning, but I was definitely tired later on! I can't wait for Zach's next race. I may have race fever, too!