5k

at 6:30am Katie, Felecia and I all got up, brushed the tiredness out of our eyes and stumbled down to Liberty Park to start the 5k portion of the Salt Lake marathon. up until the moment the race started I was filled with doubt about if I reallllllyyyy wanted to be doing this. BUT, the moment the band (school of rock) started up with the wailing guitars... Man, I was hooked. endorphines and other previously absent chemicals starting flowing to my brain, pumping out long forgot thoughts of "you will win" or "Stomp those fuckers with strollers! more running room for the runners!". I felt like a champion boxer just before the first ding of the bell. Then the horn went off and the mass of runners surged forward in a slow crawl past the starting line, previously Felecia and I decided that we were just going to walk and do a bit of running, all that changed the minute I got passed the starting line. We all ran along with each other until we got out of the park and then I couldn't stop running, I was feeling great and didn't want to slow down, I looked back but I couldn't see the sister or Felecia, so I just turned and kept running. about a mile into the run I realized that this wasn't so bad and that my previous spurning of running was entirely unfounded. I was loving it, my lungs were burning but my legs were keeping up. As I rounded Pioneer park and making the last stretch onto Rio Grande road, I heard clapping and whooping coming from behind me, I turned around to look and I was greeted with a view of a very tall, very lean muscular Kenyan man running first place in the half marathon. Holy shit I thought, that man is totally kicking some ass! jebus he is all leg! shit, that's my new hero. I wanted to shake his hand at the finish line, but by the time I got there he was no where to be seen. oh well.

Anyways, I finished the race, but I am still hungry for more. I think I will be finding more 5k's to run and next year I want to hit up the 1/2 marathon. Hopefully my new hero will be back for another go next year.

Andrew Barrrett unofficial time for 5k: 41 minutes.