I’m surprised that it was so long between posting an update to the website but the weather has quite frankly not been very inspiring for running. I had been looking forward to running the Get Pumped for Pets 10k run in Maryland with my girlfriend after we made it a destination race for a birthday vacation together.  The race was to race money for the Animal Resource Foundation that rescues animals from shelters and was between our birthdays. Although we didn’t train for the race, I felt able to run a 10k – but this was going to be the longest I’d run since the stress fracture last year. The day before the race we stopped into the shelter to see if we could pick up our packets early and ended up seeing and petting some of the very cute animals – it was a good job we were on holiday or I think there is a very strong chance we’d have come home with a cat or a puppy (or two).

Sunday morning – the day the clocks moved forward an hour, we got up early and got ready for the race. Our hotel was about 2 mins from the start which made losing an hour of sleep a little more bearable.

Before the race we stopped to take some photos for the Running with Spatulas website competition – much to the amusement of the girl we asked to take our photos. The conversation of “Are those spatulas? Yes. Why are you running with spatulas?” was quite amusing and a good conversation starter.

I was also wearing my gofaster batman socks that my amazing girlfriend got me for christmas.

The go faster capes didn’t actually work as I ended up running just over an hour – 1hr and 6 seconds which is slower than last year, but this was the longest run after the stress fracture and not that much slower so I was actually pretty pleased with the result. The race was an out an back route and very flat but unfortunately I still had to walk a couple of times during the run which shows I need to get back to some serious training. At the 6 mile beep on the garmin I looked at the watch and saw I had 90 seconds to run the last .2 miles. As I sprinted towards the finish line I caught up with a woman who had been just in front of me and we came running fast into the finish line. Brandi got some video (which I haven’t had time to convert to the computer yet) which looks like I was hardly moving at all as we came round the corner, yet I felt like I was really sprinting in at the end.

The official results was 1hr 6 seconds,  54/106 runners, 4/7 age group, 9.42 pace.

The only other time we got to run on the vacation was on the beach, in the freezing wind as we went looking for a geocache. I saw the beach and knew I had to do a very short run on the beach – but I really don’t recommend running on the beach in brand new shoes, jeans, snowboarding jacket and a wooly hat I can’t wait until my next vacation and a chance to run on the beach properly.

Have you ever gone on vacation for a race? Any recommendations for a destination race?