133 days to my first half marathon! Today I ran the Foam Fest 5k in Whites Creek, TN. This is an obstacles course race. I have never done one of those before and I had heard horror stories from last years race, so I was a little nervous when the gun went off this morning!
My day started by waking up at 3:15am to kiss Eddie bye as he left for his half marathon. This is the first time he raced without me. I fell back asleep for a little bit, but we were staying with friends so I had a restless night. I started getting ready around 5:15am. Over the past week in Nashville temperatures have ranged from 40's to 90's. The weather was predicting 44 degrees and rain at our start time. Yay me! Now remember, I did the color run this year in pouring down rain and 37 degrees. Nevertheless, got up and ready! I decided to wear a bathing suit instead of undies and sports bra. My other clothes were spandex wicking type material to try and keep it fast drying and lightweight. I doned my signature headband and off we went! It was overcast and cool when we left.
Most of the running group did this run. We were signed up for the first wave at 8am. Once we parked, we rode a bus over to the farm which was a cowboy theme park thingy. Stood in line for registration and lined up for the run. Adrenaline was pumping at the start line. My mind was on Eddie and how he was doing, and whether or not I was going to make it through this adventure!
It started with two obstacles right off the bat. Easy ones but enough to get you wet and slightly muddy! Then it was off to do some running in the woods! Weather update: cloudy, cool, no rain yet! I was feeling great today! My legs felt light, my breathing was steady, and I was bouncing down the trails. Before I knew it, I was at a water station and they said, "you're a little over half way done!" What??!!! I got this! I actually think I'm loving trail running!! So we kept going but it was time for some obstacles again! We made it to the river and it was innertube time! Immediately after that was lily pad which was running across mats laid across the river! I wiped out but it was so fun!!!
After that lovely series of water obstacles, we got to run through a huge ice-cold mud puddle and low crawl through mud. Then we were on a short run to the wall obstacle. Let me remind you all that I'm 5ft tall. With a little help to make sure I didn't slide down the other side and fall, I made it over the wall! Now the next obstacle started out ok. This was the rope climb. I got 3/4 of the way up and started freaking out! All I could think was I was going to have a foot slip off the rope and to my doom!! My friend Reko talked me to the top and over the other side! Then we were off to get cleaned up (yeah right!) and to the death drop slide!! That would round out or Foam Fest 5k. So happy I accomplished this! Would definitely do it again! It worked muscles I'm not used to in my weekly street runs. By the way, no rain!!! And to top off the day, Eddie had a PR at his half of 1:37:36!
