Mid Summer's Night Run

Here's my brother and I before our race at our Mom & Dad's house. I look sooooo fat in this picture, I almost didn't post it, but its the truth.

Here's the view from mid-crowd prior to the race starting. Check out the sweat-band! Old School.

And another picture.

I was number 56--my brother teased me about it (registering so early). He said, oh, gee, #56 (in a loud voice) you must be one of the ringers--are you a Kenyan?

Being a procrastinator, he was #5149--and he missed out on 5150 (the police/medical code for crazy person who needs to be put in a mental ward against their wishes), which would have been appropriate, I think :)

Okay, so here's the deal, I came in at 1 hour 1 minute and change. BUT there's a couple details that need to be added:

#1 We were doing reasonably well among the bottom third walkers, but then my brother needed to pee and we took five minutes to find a bathroom. Then the entire bottom third passed us and we were 7th & 8th to last, which I'm a bit embarrassed about. My father said I should have gone on without him--his bladder, his problem. But fundamentally, this was about simply following through and doing the race, regardless of what shape we are in. Next year, my niece said she'd do it with us and that she'd show no mercy. Over the coming year I would like to get off some weight and get my time down--so, I'm considering this a baseline.

#2 There was no water until after mile 2 and they planned the race so that it looped around itself and the competitive runners had to pass the mass of solid walkers when we barely just started and there was no special lane for them, but a cop telling us to move over. It was confusing and needed better coordination overall. Apparently though this was a record breaking number of participants.

#3 We did it and that's something to be proud of! Thanks J for doing it with me!