The Best Race Ever? On a Whim With the Girlfriends!

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As runners, we have all kinds of goals and pursuits. Win race. Finish race. Meet a time goal. Set a personal best.

My goal, usually, is even simpler: enjoy and have your best race ever!

That doesn’t happen nearly as often as I wish it did. I enjoy running, always, but best race ever is not an honor to be bestowed lightly! Last week at RnR SF, I had the best race ever. At the New York City Marathon in 2006, I had the best race ever. Beyond that? Not many “bests”… Until today, when I had the best race ever!

It was an unplanned, untrained-for, last-minute race-day-registration 10K that I got talked into doing last night at the one-year anniversary part of the San Jose chapter of Moms Run This Town. It went down like this:

Melanie: Alison and I are running the Slug Run 10K in Santa Cruz tomorrow. Wanna come?

Melanie made this cake and gazillion cupcakes from scratch.
Me: Oh, I don’t know… Let me “ask” the family if it’s OK. [Code for: YES! Let’s just go an let them know that I’m doing it while I eat this amazing cake!]

And before you know it, ’tis the crack of dawn and we’re driving over the hills to Santa Cruz… Good Morrow, UC Santa Cruz!

The Slug Run is organized by the Santa Cruz Track Club and is your typical local event: 100-ish participants, low-key start and finish area, but great organization and support throughout the course and post-race coffee and bagels!

We started on a field: then ran to the hilly, hilly, hilly trail — smack in the middle of the woods: Then turned back and power it down to the finish:My time was 53:50 and I came in first in my age group (that could only happen in a small race like this!) and so did Alison in the 5K.

Race bib, AG winner medal [there were no finisher medals for this race!], and the best part: socks instead of the standard finisher T-shirt!
But now I must stop because you are in for a treat later on tonight (or tomorrow morning), with an upcoming race review from Melanie. Stay tuned!

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