Mama's First Race!

Most of our blog readers know how much Mama likes to ride her bike, and she has entered several fundraiser bike rides over the years, but never an actual race. Recently she has added running to her fitness regime, and Sunday she competed in her first ever competitive race (of any kind), the Love ME 5K in Camden!

The event was held at the Penobscot Bay YMCA, and there was lots of snow on the ground, but the temperature was actually fairly warm--about 25 degrees.Since it was Valentine's Day, each racer got a choice of a pair of running socks with hearts on them, or a box of candy. Can you believe that Mama chose the socks?She was a little nervous at the start, but after finding a quiet corner to do some stretching, she starting feeling better.We were planning to stay the night at our friend Hildy's house (who lives in Camden), and she came to the race to cheer Chris on!At the starting line everyone was complaining about the "cold" except Mama--she has been training for the last six weeks and has run in weather as cold as two degrees!Finally, they were off--there's Mama just in front of the woman in the yellow coat.And here she is 5 kilometers later--in a sprint finish! There was no way she was going to let the guy with a scarf beat her!She finished in 26:11, which was a personal best.Note that she was sporting a Seahawks hat for the big race--combined with Mom's Oregon State hat, we were quite the west coast representatives.After everyone had finished, we gathered back at the YMCA to hear the race results.All the times were recorded and announced, and........Mama took home first prize in her age group (30-39)! Even more impressively, her time would have also won the 20-29 age group. We are all very proud of her.A very impressive result for Mama's first ever race!