UVU Charity Run

Race #4 of 2013

Oh what a fun race!
The UVU charity 5K.
Which turned out to be a 10K for me and Josh.
I've mentioned before that I wanted to experience unique and different races this year.
This one certainly falls under that category.
Never in a million years would I have signed up for this on my own.
A 5K?  That just seems like a waste of time and money. 
But when Josh said he and Jill and Mark Gabica were coming down to Utah Valley to run it I jumped on board.   I had met Mark and Jill last year at the Pink Donut Half Marathon where they helped volunteer and hand out the most delicious treats at our turn around spot.
This charity run was a pretty inexpensive run and we would get pancakes and a t-shirt.
Not only that but it would be indoor and warm with no dirty air inversions, no bus rides, no portopotties. 
It was to be a positive experience all around.

I got down to UVU about an hour early because Josh and I decided ahead of time that running a 5K on a Saturday morning just wasn't going to cut it for mileage for the day. We got checked in and got our bibs and t-shirts and a map of the course. When the lady showed me the map I was a little confused.  The red line and arrows showing where to go just seemed like a very short run.  I kept asking her if she was sure that was 3.1 miles?  Could the halls of a campus really be that far?  Finally we both read the small print and discovered we would need to run this a total of 4 times.  Ah Ha! That made much more sense.

There weren't a lot of people here yet and I was itching to get some running in before it started..... So away me and Josh went with about a half hour before the race was to start. Up and down and turn around and round and round we went, following the pink signs and arrows as we ran.

The morning fog was pretty bad, along with the nasty air inversion and I was just grateful to be inside running.  I've been enjoying my treadmill quite a bit this winter but this was just a lot of fun to actually be moving somewhere and be indoors still.

This is the famous Hall of Flags at UVU.  I don't know a lot about it but my son Cooper said it's a pretty awkward place for girls to walk during school because guys sit here and watch them.

Jill snapped this photo of me and Josh running.  I'm still waiting for Josh to draw up the adoption papers and then he'll officially be one of my kids.  He calls me Mama Duck and says I need to get yellow shoes to match my name.  I'm not sure if he calls me that because I run like a duck?  Or waddle like a duck? I can quack like a duck most surely.

We were able to get in 3 laps and then headed back to the starting area for the "official" start time.  We would need to do 5 more laps to have a complete 10K.  No problem! 

We did our loops and basically had a blast of a day. I have no official time because we just did it weird doing 3 laps then 5 rather than 4 and 4.  Anyway, I think I came up with a time of 1:08:15 as a pretty close guess for our unofficial 10K.

I saw some friends from my ward running and waved multiple times as we would pass in the halls.

I saw people pushing strollers.

I saw kids, and families.

I saw Lindsay Farnworth as one of the volunteers for UVU and she would cheer us on as we went by her intersection.  She snapped a few photos of us trying to jump.  Hmmm.....wondering how those turned out.  We were struggling jumping in sync.  It was kind of hilarious actually.

Everyone just seemed to be having a great time though. 

When we got back to the finish line area they were serving pancakes, oatmeal, orange juice, and nutella.  I'm not a big pancake lover unless they are healthy with oats or whole wheat in them so I passed on those.  The oatmeal was delish though. A glob of nutella hit the sweet tooth nicely.

T-shirts are pretty cute.

Some races are just an automatic do again for the next year.  This would be one of them.  I would even want to go a little earlier and get in a few more laps.  I could have run here all day it was just that delightful for me.