For the sixth year in a row, Kelly and I ran the New Year’s Day 5-miler. He’s run it more times than that, but we’ve run it together every year since he convinced me to start running in the fall of 2008.
But things were a little different this year.
For the first time in many years, we celebrated New Year’s Eve alone. Our best friends were felled by the bug that’s going around. There was discussion about non-ill friend John coming to town just for the run, but we all woke up to this:
Freezing rain. In some areas, sleet. In any case, ugh.
So John didn’t come. And more than half of the people who signed up didn’t come either.
John told us to take the obligatory pre-race photo. We sat in the car for our selfie. #wisdom
In fact, we sat in the car until 2 minutes before race start. #wisdom
By the way, this is what my headband says. I’m only able to wear it when the weather is super cold (like New Year’s Day) because it’s fleecy-thick.
It rained for the first two miles of the race. Cold and wet. Awesome.
And even if it hadn’t rained during the race, we still had massive puddles, mud and gross muddy puddles to avoid on the course.
We were very very wet finishers. But PR-finishers, and somehow that makes everything worthwhile.
Plus we’d brought towels, warm dry clothes and – importantly – fresh socks and shoes, as well as winter coats and gloves.
That made waiting for our age placement awards (Kelly #2! Shannah #3!) tolerable.
Kelly’s won an award every year he’s run since 2009 except for the year of the DI. (Forgot what that was? Read here.) He’s awesome that way!