First athetic event in 18 years!!!!

Ok this will be brief but in the hopes of getting something down....

Saturday, Five Fast Femme Fatale Freiks ran as a 5 person female relay team again in the Akron Mary. This marathon does such a nice job of putting together this marathon! Top notch for sure!

Anyways, I ran the 2nd relay leg which was a 5K on account that I was planning to race the following day on my mtn bike. I got the bracelet from MB after her nice 10K run and took off like a bat outta hella passing people and loving it! There are several short climbs out of the gate and a mile in, I was already wheezing terribly and wishing I had hit my inhaler (dummy!). Apparently even the the morning was cool, it felt humid too me and the air felt incredibly thick. I slowed down and forced my legs to carry me forward and try not to disappoint my girls. I felt like my legs were lead weights (and they subsequently got really sore) and I wondered if my leg muscles were also feeling the effects of my labored breathing and O2 defcit. ????

As I approached the relay exchange point I saw my teammate Aime about a 100 yds from the exchange zone exclaiming she did not expect to see me so soon. I said drop your crap and hustle that butt up there! Thank goodness she did as I was happy to be done with my leg. Anyways I ran my 5K with an official time of 21:16 (~6:50 pace) which was 8 seconds slower than last year. I then coughed the rest of the day after destroying my lungs breathing too hard!

My girls all tied together great runs and we managed to finish with a time of 3:05:30 (~7:04 pace). Yet again, them darn KSU girls got us again so we ended up 2nd again! So all in all we were 2/102 5 person female relay teams and 18/848 of all relay teams. I am so proud of all 4 of my other teammates for doing so well!!! Perhaps third time will be a charm!

Moving on to Sunday...West Branch Mountain Bike Race!!!

My husband participated in his first athletic event in 18 YEARS!!!! (This time he coughed the rest of the day after breathing too hard!)

All went well for both of us. I had signed up for the novice (1 loop) class after debateing all week between that one and the sport class (2 loops). The only thing was I ended up being the only female of 10 (all of which who looked pretty experienced) that did the beginner class. They sent me off with the seniors and pretty quickly I started to pull ahead of some of them and went on to pass several guys in a few of the classes that went off before me. Sorry boys, but it is funny when people say 'Sorry go ahead man only to realize they are being passed by a chick!'

So I put in a decent effort but knowing there was no one I was technically racing against, I probably did not push as hard as I could have. I still enjoyed every minute of it!

It was amazing the amount of bikes down through the race course with flats and other mechnanical issues. Totally stinks for them! I saw one particular guy down who I knew and I was bummed as he should have done really well!

At the end of the day both my husband and I had fun out there and completed the course with no problem! We have come along ways but there is still so much work to catch up to all of those other riders who have WAY more experience than us. I need to work hard on all the technicals and getting smoother. Good thing is we are both highly motivated to keep going out there and working on it! We both met our goals and enjoyed trying something new. I hear Ohio Mtn Bike Assoc is working on a 5 race series next summer ....hmmmm!!!