That's it, no more excuses: First Official "5K" in the Books!

My first official "5K" is complete :) I put it in quotation marks because according to all of our running apps it was not a full 5K. It was more like 2.5 miles as opposed to 3.1 Either way I'm happy I did it. We previously had signed Chris up to be a participant, but that was prior to his heart stuff, so his sister Kathleen went in his spot. We got down to Peoria on Friday afternoon and went to get our running packets. They contained a t-shirt, a packet of neon powder and our number bib. The race wasn't until Saturday at 8 pm so we had a lot of fun hanging out on Friday and Saturday. We got to the race location around 7:30 and we were SHOCKED by the number of people there. There were thousands of people. My bib number was 11657 and Eric and Ann were in the 4000's it was crazy! As we walked to the start everyone was throwing their color packets at everyone else, so we were neon even before we started :) They were letting runners go in waves every 5 minutes. We kind of jumped to the front of the line and bypassed the long wait.

We had no idea of what the course looked like, it was hidden away. Chris took lots of pictures of us at the start and finish which was nice! Our wave went and Kathleen took off, she wanted to get a really good time. Eric, Ann and I all started jogging together. Once we got a few minutes in we saw part of the course. It was an open fair ground field and you went back and forth across it following the path they'd laid out with cones, in the dark! The problem with it being at a fair ground is that there wasn't a paved path, it was just an open field full of rocks, stones, holes, etc. After almost tripping a few times, Ann and I decided we were going to power walk it. We saw a few people wipe out, not our cup of tea. Every 3/4th's of a mile or so we would go through a "glow station" which was basically 6 people throwing neon powder at you. Some didn't have the best aim, we had it up our noses, in our ears, lol.

The second part of the course wound us through the animal stables (thankfully they weren't full!) Again pitch black at times and a bit scary, there would be large curbs to look out for, animal "droppings", etc. I had my phone so as we came close to the end I was able to text Chris and let him know we were almost at the end so he could look out for us. He saw us coming around the corner and video'd our jog in. Overall it was a fun atmosphere and experience with friends, but super dangerous. I don't think I'd do a night run again.

The website told everyone to dress in costumes and crazy colors. I looked online for how to make a tutu and went to Hobby Lobby for the supplies and made Ann, Kathleen and I each a tutu. Kathleen hooked us up with the glow stuff. The whole weekend was a lot of fun, kind of giving me the Monday blues, but I'll just keep looking at the pictures and enjoying the memories.