On Saturday I ran a 10K called Moms Rock. In case you can’t figure that out… it’s a tribute to mothers and it’s held on Mother’s Day weekend! The race started at 7 AM and it was held on gravel/dirt trails, so I didn’t take the stroller. I thought it seemed an appropriate irony that the night before I ran a Mother’s Day race was a night where Alex woke up wheezing and coughing, and I was awake with her for about 2.5 hours in the middle of the night!

The race was held at a local state park, Floyd Lamb State Park, a place that I’ve actually been running at fairly frequently the past several months. It’s pretty there, I find it peaceful and it clears my mind. It’s one of my little oases here in Las Vegas. (An oasis with actual water, my other one is very dusty/dirty/open desert!)

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Anyway, I woke up early to make sure all systems were go, then went to the race start. I found the Team Challenge group at the race, they were doing this as their mid-training cycle tune-up race! It was great to see them, I really do miss coaching in that program. Someday I’d like to return to it! I also stopped to chat with Jim, the owner of the local Fleet Feet Sports store.

It wasn’t too long before the race director was summoning everyone to the start. She explained the course, as well as informed us that there may be some cones missing as there was some jerk running out there on the course throwing all the cones into the desert and threatening to mace the volunteers that were trying to fix them. I don’t understand why somebody would do that to a race, but I’ve heard about people pulling down markers at several races. Why?! WHY?!!!

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Anyway, I guess I could see that the course might be a little confusing when listening to the description if you’ve never run out there, just because there are so many offshoots that you could take and the 5K went off on some of those and then would reconnect in with the 10K before leaving the trail once more. This required lots of signs around, but I think overall people were fine with it.

The race felt great, there was a pretty good headwind when running to the north, so that felt like it was slowing me down… but it pushed me along when running to the south! And as much as I love doing races with my daughter in the stroller, it was a lot of fun to get to do one on my own for once too!

After the race I ran into more people I know. Charlene was kind enough to snap a picture of me and one of the people I saw was a gal I trained with for the San Antonio RnR marathon back in 2008. I actually haven’t even seen her since I had a kid… and Alex is 20.5-months-old now! Weird how you can spend so much time with someone for years and then you just kind of drift apart.

I stopped at Starbucks on my way home after the race. The gal at the register asked what my number and medal were from, so I told her I ran a 10K. She said, “A 10K?! Whoa! What is that in real miles?”

When I told her it was 6.2 miles she said, “And you’re still walking?! That’s crazy!” Sometimes I forget that people react that way, especially when I feel a little down on myself that 6-7 miles is my “long run” these days and I used to run 13+ every weekend! Good reminder to myself that our journeys change throughout life!

Interesting fun fact: There were 135 finishers in the 10K… 100 of them were female!
I was 12th out of 100 females.
20th out of 135 runners.
8 out of 32 in my AG.