Birch Bay Road Race

Before going to sleep Friday night I set my alarm in time to get to the race. At the very least, I was going to go pick up my race shirt. On Saturday morning, I woke up and put on tech clothes and packed a bag as if I was going to race. Then I made the short drive out to Birch Bay.

When I went to pick up my packet, I found out they were out of XS and S shirts. If I had actually been there to race, I would have been pretty upset because it was even printed right there on my packet that I registered for an XS and there was no prior notice that it was going to be first come first served as far as the shirt sizes. But instead my initial reaction was that if I wasn't going to wear the shirt, there was no need to earn it by doing the race. So I turned down the shirt and handed my timing chip over to a volunteer at the help desk.

I started to head back to my car and then realized it was silly to walk away empty handed when I had paid for a shirt with my registration. I went back and found the volunteer I had talked to and asked if I could get a large shirt to give to my boyfriend. He's just started running and I figured he could use a long sleeve tech shirt.

This time I made it all the way back to my car before deciding that since I had already gotten up early to be there, I might as well participate. The rain seemed to be holding off and all the walking back and forth didn't seem to be irritating my foot. When weighing my options on Friday night, I had forgotten there was a 5k distance which was perfect for me to just walk the whole thing. I went back to talk to the volunteer a third time... she must have thought I was such a ditz! But I got switched over successfully.

The 5k course was a nice, almost entirely flat route along the waterfront. I psuedo race walked it and finished in 42:20.

Aside from the shirt issue, it seemed like a good race and I'm looking forward to giving it another shot next year.

After the race I went to the gym and rode the stationary bike for an hour. Usually the bike is a good low impact alternative when I'm sidelined from running, but this time unfortunately my foot was aching a bit when I finished. I don't know if it was the biking or the combination of walking and biking that was too much. I have an appointment with my physical therapist on Tuesday and I'm hoping she'll be able to help me figure out what's wrong. It's really frustrating because I don't know what I did to my foot in the first place, or how to fix it.