Well, I did it...

Smiling because it's almost over

It was clear last week that the weather would be snowy for the Gingerbread Pursuit.

I left the house in the dark a little after 7am, and made my way very slowly downtown. Friday night, I'd looked up parking and our start location. I parked in a parking garage to avoid having to shovel snow off the car post-race, headed to Berry Street, then quickly realized that I had left my gloves in the car, so went back and grabbed them. After walking a couple of blocks (it was light now), I realized that I had made a massive miscalculation and had no clue where Berry Street was.

Downtown was pretty deserted, as one might expect on wintry Saturday morning. I was on the lookout for anyone in brightly colored running gear, with no luck for blocks and blocks, when finally spotted one of our running mentors running eastward. I'd been walking north.

So, I ended up having a good, brisk walk as a warm-up and made it to the packet pick-up locale with plenty of time to spare.

Good to have the ambulance handy

We started the race on a main road that had been plowed at some point. But then we moved to a side street. And then to sidewalks and paths where we went over bridges, along a river, and by the historic old fort. My main goal was to run in tread marks or places where people had packed down the snow to make it at least a little easier. It was like running in sand.

This is my running friend who does her hair and make-up before the run.
I could use some work in this area.

So, it was totally the hardest running conditions that I've ever run in. On the bright side, it wasn't icy, and the temperature wasn't bad--high twenties.

I would never apply for this person's job.

I did make it to the end where the poor person working as The Gingerbread Man (I hope he/she was paid well for this) stood for pictures.

Or the reindeer handler's job, for that matter.

In addition to the Gingerbread Man photo op, we were served water, a large gingerbread cookie and a muffin in a lovely warm room. My time per mile was a minute and a half less than the four mile run two weeks ago, which made me very happy, and I placed tenth in my age group. I'm sure there were plenty of people who were registered who didn't come, so it's not like I was ten out of fifty, but still--ten sounds good.