Sound to Narrows 12k

The Sound to Narrows went pretty well. I learned not to wear the socks I chose for the Bellingham marathon. =0) Good to know. They are a bit to loose, so they rub a little and cause my feet to sweat more than the Brooks socks I normally wear (they were all dirty). Kim and her sister Lisa and her son Jordan came too. Kim and Lisa ran the 12k and Jordan and Rikki and I walked it. My friend Marci and her son Daniel found us at the start line. I was worried she had not come because she didn't call my phone so we could find each other before the race, but she told me that she left her phone in her car. OOPS! Oh well. I walked with them for a while, but Jordan and Rikki (mostly Jordan) wanted to run a bit, so I said they could run ahead as long as I could see them and they could see me.That lasted for a while, but when we got into Point Defiance with it's windy roads, they got a bit farther than they should have, so I had to part with my friend and zoom ahead to find them. It was funny to run by all the walkers. They kind of look at you sideways, thinking to themselves perhaps "uh...this is the walkers part of the race", or maybe "what's so important that you have to run to get there?" Maybe they weren't thinking anything at all. I don't know. Anyway, I found them around the two mile point and Rikki was saying her knees were hurting her, so we slowed it down a bit. Poor Jordan, it was torture for him to walk with us. So I started letting him run to the curve in the road, or the next sign, or to the medic car, or the next big tree. Rikki was really complaining about her knees, so at one point we stopped to rest, and another time we stopped for a potty break and to let Marci catch up. She is a surgical nurse, so i was going to ask her what she thought we should do for Rikki, but they never came by, so we kept going, figuring they took the short cut offered a mile or so ago, either that or they zoomed past us when we weren't looking.. I made Rikki tough it out until about the 5 mile mark and then she was complaining so much that I didn't want to risk an injury, so I told her that she could ride with the medics (if they would let her) at the next station. We stopped and the medic who had wrapped her knee with ice earlier told us that she could not ride with them, but the bus that was following us would be happy to take her. Once she was on the bus Jordan and I ran most of the rest of the way. He is very goal oriented and competitive. He kept saying he wanted to get past the group ahead of us, so we passed about three groups before we ran into Kim and Lisa. Jordan ran the rest of the way with his mom and I walked and chatted with Kim, and then we ran in to the finish line. With all the delays along the way it took us about two hours and 27 minutes to finish!!!! It was a beautiful course though. Jordan said that next year he is going to run the whole thing. I think he will be the fasted kid out there. It was a great day for running though, nice and cool. For some reason I developed a water blister on my left heel (probably from the socks I was wearing), and I learned that I should take a few pretzels with me next time. There was no food on the course, only water, which is great except when you are hungry. There was food at the finish line, so that kept us going for a bit longer; but it's hard to coax your body to perform well on the thought of food at the end. It wants it NOW! =0) Lesson learned. All in all ~ it was a good day.