Finished the Lawyers Have Heart 10k this morning (an hour and 8 or 9 minutes – I forgot to hit the stop button when I zipped over the finish line and they haven’t posted results yet). Ran for the first 4 miles or so, then took some walking breaks. It was made pleasant for those first 4 miles by a young law student who decided to chat with me about triathlons (I was wearing a club shirt). She had a good pace and we ran pretty well together, which was nice. I finally let her go when I needed to drop down out of zone 4 and back into zone 3 with some walk breaks. Glad I did the race, I needed the experience, even if it did mean I didn’t go out last night.
One thing that annoyed me was that they used a new disposable timing chip system – as if Championchip’s resuable chips weren’t good enough. So now we all have a piece of miniature electronics and plastic to throw away. Ugh. I’m going to send a polite note to the race organizers expressing my displeasure over the waste.
Popped down to the parade this evening. Dear heavens but that took forever. The sun had been down over half an hour and floats and groups were still coming past the reviewing stand. Someone needs to work on their timing. Or start the thing earlier. Or something, because N and I finally gave up and went to meet the typing pool for dinner down on P street. Took a lot of pictures, not sure if any are worth anything. Did discover my backup battery had no charge (whoops!), so those are getting charged now and in the morning before tomorrow’s day at the festival. My plan is to spend pretty much all day down there seeing folks, chatting and what not. I always prefer the festival over the parade because the pace is more leisurely and it’s not such a logistical mess.
In the meantime, I’m going to try and get up and get in a bike ride in the morning, as well as hitting the work ATM so I don’t have to pay fees. Sunscreen galore for tomorrow, too. No sense getting more fried than I need to.