Just a quick recap from today’s event. Back sometime last fall I had seen an email for The Biggest Loser RunWalk 5K that was coming to Fort Lauderdale on January 6th. I originally looked it over and then though, nah-not interested. The second time I saw an email, I thought about it and then decided, why not? They actually give you a whole hour and a half to complete the 5K...I could walk the whole thing R E A L L Y slow like a turtle and still be just fine (not like there would be a sag wagon for a 5K, but still). Plus you would get a tech shirt, a finisher’s medal and (drumroll please...........) free downloads of your race pics! Yeah, bet most of you haven’t seen that one before. And so I went ahead and signed up.
Here we are on January 6th and it’s time for the 5K. Packet pickup was yesterday at a local running store. On the website they had said that Dan Evans (season 5 Biggest Loser contestant, orange team) would be performing race morning...he was actually at the store helping with setup when I got there. We got a bib, drawstring backpack and our tech shirts. One thing I was a bit puzzled about was the women’s shirts (they had both women’s and men’s sizes)--being that this is a Biggest Loser event, you would expect to see many larger-sized people, right? The women’s shirts only went to XL, but these were your average women’s tech shirts-that “slim” type cut-where an XL is not what a real XL is in regular clothes...and so I got a men’s XL instead.
This morning I headed down early since it was being held in Downtown Fort Lauderdale and I almost never go there and didn’t want to lose my way. It had been raining before I left the house so it was really humid--like 93% humid--and 70 degrees. Thankfully the rain cleared out and a light breeze was going on by the time the 5K started...unfortunately the humidity didn’t really go away though. We’re having a warm winter this year with highs in the 80s, I was hoping for today that we could have had cooler and drier weather but that just wasn’t happening. I met up with a friend from ROTE (Hi Tracy!) and was re-introduced to someone from my high school class (over 24 year ago, wow!) and we hung out until the start. Dan Evans would be performing but before that he was again helping with setup, then he and his mom (Jackie) got up on stage at the start line and got us all started. Dan even sang the national anthem before we started ( a little off-key for the first line, but overall did pretty good, especially since it was 7:30 in the morning).
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| At the start line-Dan and Jackie (season 5, orange team) are on the stage to the right at the front |
I decided to just walk the course, aiming to just be under an hour since I really haven’t done much training the past couple of months. I started going too fast (as always) and my shins and calves immediately let me know. So I slowed down a bit...to find a little drawbridge after our first turn. The incline wasn’t too bad, but have you ever walked over a drawbridge down here? The top of the bridge is a metal grate. Which wouldn’t have been an issue...if it hadn’t been raining. I saw a few people slip so told myself to be careful...and still slipped a little myself (yeah, my back loved that). After that I settle into a steady walk. We walked thru downtown a little, then through an long-established neighborhood with beautiful, fancy homes...and cars-like the gorgeous red Ferrari and cream-colored Bentley I passed about halfway through the course. Back into downtown and around another corner to----another drawbridge. This time I got up on the sidewalk since the streets were still wet. I sped up a little bit, headed for the finish line and squeaked in at 59:16. I did walk the entire way, just trying to enjoy being out there and not trying for any kind of time...except to just be under an hour which I did do. Got my medal (yes an actual metal medal!) but didn’t feel like hanging around-there were a couple of booths set up with some vendors, but nothing that really caught my eye-and so said my goodbyes and headed home.
Overall the event was good, it was just too bad that the weather was so humid. Topped the day off by watching The Biggest Loser season premiere tonight. Not sure if I’ll watch all season since I’m not a fan of the scheming and head games that start up as the season goes on, but it was a good end to the day. I’m using today’s 5K as my re-start for my own weight-loss program since I majorly fell off the wagon this past year. I’ll post more on that in another blog entry, for now it’s time to finally head to bed.
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