Being part of Team Running Free, I entered my name in the lottery for freebies and won a free entry with the VR Pro Rae series! I ended up choosing to run in the Santa 5k a couple weekends ago. I have been renovating at home and have been on the minimal training plan resting and recovering from a full fall marathon schedule. I ended up going into the race with 1 full week of not running and with the race strategy of run hard and don’t look at my garmin.
My wife and son came along for the morning to see me run, but mostly to see the sea of Santa’s everywhere. My son is only 2.5, so he really enjoyed the day and seeing all the santa’s. Parking was great & same day race kit pickup was offered. I went grabbed my race kit, bib, chip & free santa suit. I headed back to the car to change and get suited up. My son kept giggling at me cause of the santa suit. I got out the car ready to go, it was a little chilly but it wasn’t to bad. I ran a 10k in February in Ottawa a couple years ago, that was cold. I saw a couple of santa’s using some duct tape to keep the santa suit from falling and then gave me a few piece of to use for myself. We headed over to the start finish area and it was truly a festive mood in the air. I did a short warm up and ran a couple blocks for 2 min or so, just to let the legs know that it was run time again! I headed over the starting corral and joined in the christmas carols waiting for the race to start. I lined up close to the start line a few rows back. The horn sounded and we started the race. It is a loop course, first k little downhill, 2k & 3k slight uphill/incline on the main road and head in to the neighborhoods , 4k flat still in the neighborhood and then head back to the main street & the last k downhill & dead straight, you can see the finish line for the whole k. I ended up running a 18:49, and 13th overall.
I highly recommend this race!
Troy.
