Will Run for Chocolate

There are a lot of things, it turns out, that I am willing to jog for.  Chocolate is one of them. Wine would be another, and I'm hoping some day there's a Wine Race.

Anyhow, this past Sunday was my second 5K of the year. I managed to miss a 5K in February so I am hopefully doing 2 in March. The Hot Chocolate Run was the first (The Mercer Island one will be the second.)

Race day hadn't quite dawned yet when TOJ (The Other Jenn) and I were in the car heading to Seattle. Race start time was 6:45am. TOJ is not a morning person. And while I'm ok with mornings, I'd prefer them to start not in the middle of the night - which leaving my house at 5:45am is...the middle of the night.

Still we were ready. We found parking pretty quickly and found our way to the correct corral.  I had registered us for a 15 minute mile - which is slow to some folks.  In October we had done a 19 minute mile during that 5 K - but that 5K had small sidewalks and a ton of people. 

The sun began to rise as corral K got closer to the starting line.  The air horn blew and we were on our way.

Our plan was to do the first part using the Couch to 5K app and then just time our jogging after - I wanted to find out how many minutes I had actually ran. 

Right out of the gate, we were jogging, downhill. Perfect. This would help with our 15 minute mile.  We turned a corner and WHAM...a hill. This would not help our 15 minute mile.  Besides being cold, and not really a fan of hills, this hill stopped me dead from jogging. I walked up the hill.  Eventually, it went down again, and down some more, and all I could think was "what goes down in Seattle, must go back up." Great.

We jogged on and off, and I felt like I did ok.  That first hill really took the energy out of me, but I eventually found it again. 

It was during one of our "walking" sections when we turned the corner, up a little on ramp and WHAM the Battery Street Tunnel.

Side note: Have I ever mentioned I have a wee phobia about tunnels? Yah. Hate them.

The Batter Street Tunnel was built before the dawn of man - ok maybe not, but it sure looks like it.  As we approached it I informed TOJ of my phobia and she just laughed saying she'd distract me. 

Its a long tunnel too, I might add.

Approaching the Battery Street Tunnel

See I was so scared the camera shook.

Once in the tunnel we were approaching the 2 mile mark and it was about then that I was successfully doing mind over matter. I was forgetting how grungy, and unsafe this tunnel was.  It was also then that TOJ said, "Man this tunnel is old and falling apart."  Not helping! 

We made it through to the other side and we were in the home stretch.  We walked up an incline and jogged down the other side. Once down the other side we probably had .4 miles left. We could see the Seattle Center. The finish line was reachable.

I walked part of the route to the Space Needle (up hill again) then I said to TOJ, once we hit the Space Needle we jog.  So we jogged...and we made it. WOOT!!!!

Now to the fun part...the chocolate.

They put the yummy stuff another half a mile away I swear.  Maybe not, but it sure felt like it. 

We got these little bowls that had a cup of hot chocolate, a banana, some pretzels, a wafer cookie, a rice crispy treat and a small bowl of liquid chocolate. Fondue!!! OMG...I couldn't wait to dig into that.

I think I'd consider doing this race again.  Though they really need to start it later, AND they need to not do the tunnel. Blech.

How'd I do with running? Well, I think I ran more than I did last time.  We managed to maintain a 15 minute mile (according to RunKeeper we were maintaining a 15.2 minute mile).  I ran the 16 minutes of the Couch to 5K app AND we ran an additional 19 minutes.  Woot.  That's WAY better than last time.

Next race will be just that much better.