Rave Run

I coerced a few of my friends into running a little 5K with me that sounded like fun.  It was called the Rave Run and it was a night race with lots of lights, which is why I thought it would be cool!  Glow bracelets and great people watching?  Yes, please!

Here are the racers:  Amber, Rebecca, Andrea, Sarah, Lindsay, Emily, Gina, Kyrsten, and me!  (And there are a few other ladies that I know would have been there had they not been pregnant or injured—Kristin, Heather, Dana, Katie, Kayleen, and Cassy, we missed you!)

I have to admit that the day of the race, when I realized that it was going to be a lot colder than I had assumed it would be when I signed up, I was kind of dreading it.  I HATE running in the cold.  But then all my ladies showed up at my house so we could drive up there together and I started getting PUMPED.  In spite of the cold, I was gonna have a blast.

And we did.  We really had so much fun, even though we were freezing our butts off at the start, and even though Lindsay sprayed herself in the eye with glow bracelet goo, and even though we couldn’t all find each other for AGES after it was over, and even though the race was VERY poorly organized.  I have run a lot of races in my day, and I have never seen anything quite like this. 

1. It took me 45 minutes to pick up my packet the day before the race.  Never had to wait longer than 5 minutes for packet pick-up even in HUGE races I’ve done.
2. You couldn’t see where the starting line was.  We finally heard the gun go off and tried to make our way in that direction, but it took us about 30 minutes to get to the start with the masses of people.
3. The race course crossed over itself, which means there were two times where you had to elbow through hundreds of people to get where you needed to be.  It was hard to figure out which way to go, and if you weren’t paying close attention, you would lop off an entire loop of the course!  Stupid and dangerous as well, cuz it was in the dark too!
4. When we got close to the end of the race, we wanted to push it really hard to the finish, but we had to stop and WALK through the finish line because there was such a bottleneck from people who crossed the finish line and then just stopped right there to find their friends or who knows what!
5. WAY too many people just moseying along at a snail’s pace.  I have no problem with walkers (I like a good walk too) but the walkers should have started in a separate wave after the runners so they weren’t holding things up!

After the race, a couple of us happened to be in the right place at the right time and found a little 11 year old boy who had lost his dad. . . at the starting line!  He was freaking out and there was no way we were going to leave him alone.  We promised to find his dad—easier said than done in the dark and in the masses of people at the dance party that is held right after the race.  After wandering around for about thirty or more minutes, we ran into a guy who started pointing at the kid, saying he knew him and the boy fell into his arms, sobbing (it was a friend of the kid’s dad).  Apparently the kid was there with his dad and girlfriend and a few friends and somehow they lost him at the start.  We wanted to find the dad and punch him in the face!  Clearly the kid should have been at home with a sitter, but he was dragged along and then promptly forgotten.  Wouldn’t be surprised if a little too much alcohol and pot were involved.  Poor kid.  We couldn’t stop thinking about him even hours later.

We finally found our way back to our car and found the rest of the group and went to hang out at a restaurant to warm up and talk till 1:00 am.  So glad I have some fun ladies to join me for crazy adventures!  Wouldn’t have been worth it without y’all!

Next adventure. . .

MUD RUN!

 

Who’s with me?