running in the dark

saturday night regis and i ran in the rockville twilight festival race, which is a 8k race (5 miles). considering that i never run really fast, i did quite well for me, placing 229 out of 747 in the women's category, with a total time of 44 minutes and 16 seconds which averages out to 8 minutes and 55 seconds per mile. regis ran it much faster than me, finishing at 37 minutes and 11 seconds and averaging 7 minutes and 29 seconds per mile! (if interested in checking out the results, click here and then go to the race results for july 15's rockville rotary twilight run.) the run itself was lots of fun, and since it's at night, they give each runner a little glow in the dark bracelet. plus after you finish the run, they have all kinds of goodies for runners, like powerbars, bananas, watermelon, oranges, pound cake, donuts, pizza, and beer! i was very excited about the watermelon. yum!

as for the run i did well up until i got to mile 4. that last mile was a killer for me though, as i developed the worst cramp ever and even had to walk about 15 seconds and i HATE walking during a run! 2 hours before the race, regis and i decided to eat a bowl of pasta for dinner, as i thought the carbs would do really well for energy. but maybe a better idea would have been to have pasta for lunch! anyway, i managed through the last mile but it definitely slowed down my time.

below are some photos that regis and i took at the event. someone commented that we were the world cup team, as i wore my france jersey and regis wore his italy jersey. kind of crazy since when regis bought the jerseys, france and italy hadn't even advanced to the quarter finals yet!

speaking of the world cup, not sure if you all have been following what happened with zidane but he went on french television to talk about the incident of the headbutt and pretty much said that materazzi said some very harsh words about his mother and sister, most probably a racial slur. if you ask me, good for zidane! i'm a total believer that violence shouldn't be used to solve problems and think that sportsmanship is very important. however, we're all human, and i know for me, in the heat of the moment, i do rash things! and if someone insults you, sometimes you can't hold back!