Sara Low Memorial 5K

Saturday was a beautiful morning for a race!! When we arrived in Batesville 7:00 it was 57 degrees and partly cloudy my favorite running conditions!
As everyone knows I have a lot of issues with my stomach while running so I rarely if ever eat any thing before a run. Sometimes this works for me and sometimes it doesn't I would say today it wasn't such a good idea to skip breakfast.
The course was very challenging steep uphills and downhills. We warmed up on some of the hills before the race and I had a bad feeling then that this wasn't going to go well. After our warm up I ran to the bathroom and then there was a memorial service for Sara Low. The main reason I wanted to run this race was because of the special meaning... I knew I wasn't going to PR or even have a good finishing time. My goal was to run all the hills and just treat the run portion as hill training.
After listening to some beautiful songs... Josh Groban's "You lift me Up" and Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings" sung by a local woman with a beautiful voice! I was pretty choked up, but then they had a very entergetic guy from a local health club warm us up and that was fun. It made me miss the old days of Jazzercise!!!

At the start of the race we ran under the American Flag and past the Fire trucks... an awesome way to start a race!!
Right away it was a VERY steep downhill and after my experience with some of the steep downhills in San Francisco I was afraid to take it very fast. After the downhill there was no flat, it immediately went into a long uphill and pretty much that describes the whole course... up down, up down, up down.
After the first couple of hill climbs I felt like my gas tank sunk to empty very fast... I wasn't dizzy but I just was running low on energy. It was a weird sensation but I've felt it before and I knew i wasn't going to pass out so I just kept running. At the water stop I did get a cup of water and tried to drink it while running but that didn't work.. all I did was get water in my shoes and not my mouth!! I slowed down and took just a couple of steps just enough to get a small sip of water. I was afraid to drink very much on an empty stomach.
The best part of the race was just before we got to the turn around and I got to see some of our runners coming towards me... I saw Bailey and called out to her and she ran over and we low fived as she passed by. I think she gave me a little bit of energy, or maybe it was just a nice boost seeing everyone. Unfortunately it didnt' last very long and then we were faced with a very long hill climb... which was made worse because I thought we still had another really steep one at the end. I was really fading so I thought I will walk part of this hill so that I can run the last one. Just before the crest of the hill I saw Marathon Boy and the lady beside me asked if this was the last hill, I said no I don't think so but I asked Jacob and he said yes it's the last one... well hell what was I conserving energy for??? So I started running again, slowly at first and then I could see the entrance to the track and they had cheerleaders out there cheering us in... that was nice! When we got on the track and i saw how close the finish line was I somehow was able to sprint to the finish line. It felt really really good and I could hear Curtis and Bailey cheering for me. I felt such a rush when I crossed the finish line, but when I saw the time I was a little dissapointed. I knew it was going to be terrible but it was worse than I had thought!!! Oh well I did have that feeling that i was going to throw up so I guess I left everything out on the course, or at least on the track. Finishing time was 31:44.
I had 1/2 an orange and grabbed some water and was just walking around when I saw the free massage tent, there were only a couple of people in line so I grabbed a spot and waited. The winner of the race Leah Thorvilson was behind me in line and she is very nice... very friendly, which you don't always see in the really fast runners.

The massage was AWESOME... the massage therapist asked where I hurt, and although I wasn't hurting at that moment I told her that my hip flexors usually hurt after a run. It reminded me a lot of the massage I got after the Bass Pro 10K... she got into my pelvic/hip flexor area not sure the technical term but at one point she put pressure on a certain spot and I could feel almost instant relief!! It was definately worth the 20 minute wait!!

It wasnt' too long after the massage when they started the awards ceremony. We got to cheer for several Cruisers who won awards.
Arland and I had to leave pretty quickly after that, we were headed to the Sporty Runner in Conway. We had received an e-mail earlier in the week notifying us that the Mizuno rolling lab was going to be there on Saturday. You can just imagine how dissapointed we were after that long drive to arrive and find out they weren't taking any more names :(
We went into the Sporty Runner and it was packed, so I just bought a pair of my favorite running socks and we left.
By the time we got home we were both pretty exhausted, I had fallen asleep in the car and it took everything I had to make it through the door..I headed to the recliner and Arland headed to the bedroom and we both took naps!