Run Wild

Today was the Cal Academy of Sciences Run Wild run.
I convinced Jeff to ride along with me and sign up too. I figured he could walk the 5k and I could run the 10k and we'd meet at the end. He hasn't tried running because of a fairly painful back injury he suffered several years ago. So we were up and on the road by 6:45, headed to Golden Gate Park in SF. We arrived and got him registered and I scored my t-shirt. Yep, managed to score another small. :-) Jeff had to wait until the end since he wasn't preregistered, but I assured him there are always plenty of large shirts left.

We took our loot back to the truck and made it to the start line with about 10 minutes to spare. There were some pretty cool costumes...some penguins, a praying mantis, some cows, a flamingo, a cowboy, a big bad wolf in grandma's PJ's, and more.

To be completely honest, I tried to get Jeff to just stay in bed so I could stay home too. I wasn't up for running today. The cold I've been fighting is just lingering on and on, making me more tired than usual. He dragged me out tho, so I decided that instead of running the 10k, I'd hang with him. You know, keep him company on his first 'official' event and all. See, I don't *have* to be competitive. I can kick back with the best of them. :-) We were discussing the distances and before we knew it, we had convinced ourselves to walk/jog the 10k. I told Jeff to take it easy and don't hurt his back, so I let him set the pace and duration of our jog sessions. I have to say, he may not run far, but he's booking. He would say "okay, let's run to xxxx" and take off. I'd push my usual pace a bit and still couldn't keep up, so he'd run until he needed a break and I'd slooooowly catch up and then walk with him until he was ready to go again. I think we finished in about 1:18, which is decent for mostly walking. I'm just proud of him that we did the whole thing! And it was kind of nice to not be pushing, pushing, pushing.

We scored his t-shirt and then hit all the freebies, including some anti-oxidant juice in cans that was awesome, some power bars, and a few miscellaneous goodies. A nice day all in all. :-)