Pilgrim Pacer 10K RR

I had enthusiastically signed up for a 10K two weeks after the marathon, because I had convinced my bestie to sign up.

She's never run one, and hasn't ran a 5K in quite awhile so I was super excited for her.

It was also the debut of the Wonder Woman costume in Kansas City, so that always makes for a fun party.

FYI for newbies, don't run any "shorter" race with someone who has just ran a marathon. They are so flipping excited that it is "only" whatever distance it is that they go out too fast for you and end up annoying the crap out of you at the end when they are still bouncing off the walls and you just want to punch them in the face.

Sorry, Cynthia. I love you.

Anyway .... the actual RR part.

Cyn and her sister and I were all running together. The sisters were in Special Olympics-colored tutus, as they had raised money for that organization and I was in my Wonder Woman costume. We made quite a trio.

Here we are!

As the race progressed, we needed to slow down and I did my best to slow a little, but enough to keep pushing my friends on. This was my mistake. I should know better that it takes awhile to get comfortable with pushing yourself just under the tipping point.

Someone also didn't bring her inhaler with her. Ahem .... we still need to have a conversation about that, miss.

About the 4 mile mark, I got too excited and took off on my own ... 15-20 minutes later, I realized what a a$$hole I was and went back for my friend. I stayed with her to the very end, pushing and yelling and not allowing her to walk that last 0.2 miles.

Like I said, she wanted to punch me in the face.

As we turned into the stretch where the crowd was, it was a relatively silent crowd so I started yelling at them, "THIS IS MY FRIENDS FIRST 10K! SHE NEEDS CHEERING! HELP BRING HER IN!". Most people started cheering and clapping. A few looked at me like I was crazy.

see me in the background, trying to rally the troops?

In the end, we made it and I was so proud of my bestie and her sister for doing a great job on their first longer distance races. They are pretty awesome.

After everyone caught their breath, we were all smiles.

Although she wasn't 100% pleased with her performance, my bestie hasn't let that stop her - she's doing a Christmas 5k next month! Yay! And her sister is ready to tackle a half marathon. So really, it was a good day.