Cotton Row 10K

M and I woke up waaay early this Memorial Day to run the yearly 10K in our downtown.  After running the Cookie Dash 5K back in April we really started to see the appeal of running with hundreds of other people, so, we've really been looking forward to the much larger scale Cotton Row.  The 6.2 mile course begins and ends downtown, winding around the neighborhoods that lead up into the mountains.   Around mile 3 there is a notorious "hill" that slows all but the top seeded runners to a "jog in place" (more accurately a walk, which was actually faster).  Leading up to the "hill", local residents had the Rocky theme song blaring and a DJ was waiting on the other side.  My personal favorite was still the 2 men handing out pop ice around mile 4.

Before the race a prayer was offered and tribute paid to our veterans.  It was very moving to honor their sacrifice in the presence of men who were on Omaha Beach in 1944.   Promptly at 7:00 am the start gun was fired, and minute or so after, the mass of people actually started moving... which was the last time I saw M during the race.  Now that he has been running again for a couple months the disparity between our times is ever increasing.  M finished in the top 25%, running it in 50:48-- slow start, hill and all.  Since M finished ahead of me I had a smiling face cheering my name when I crossed the finish line at 55:19.  More noteworthy were the winners times- 29:19 for the men and 33:08 for the women.  That is 4:45 and 5:30 minute miles respectively, people (or close to, I'm sure M will check my math)!  Unbelievable.

Thanks again to M's parents for watching J, he was still asleep when we left and down for a nap when we returned.  This made it a little difficult to take pictures this time, but they'd look fairly similar to the Cookie Dash anyways.   That afternoon we made copious amounts of pasta and bread to enjoy with some friends, and then fell into bed after a full holiday weekend.

More to follow on the yummy pasta (of course) dish Boris helped make the night before the 10K, and our beautiful hydrangeas (which I can technically take absolutely no gardening credit for, but since they are in our front yard I can take a picture and pretend).  And I'm sure I'll manage to find a few things to post about J...