BeachFest 2011

Hey y'all! This weekend was pretty boss.

I ran the 2011 NeverQuit Beach Fest 5K with Ellie and her parents yesterday. It was so much fun, but the race itself was pretty difficult.

The race started at 5pm, so I got to sleep in late, which was a super-duper awesome thing, since I stayed up until after 5am hanging out with Ellie, and then catching up on Glee... Haha. I'm a totaly Gleek.

We spent time getting ready and taking fun photos, and then we headed over to her parents house and met up with them and my mom and Baby Bro. Mom and Baby Bro were just going to be spectators, and I have to say, they were awesome. Especially since we were at the beach and Baby Bro didn't bring his swim trunks, and had to just stare at the water the whole time. Spectating is boring for adults, but for seven year olds I imagine it's pure torture.

We got there about an hour and a half early and wandered around collecting swag, and staring at a whole bunch of super attractive boys without shirts. (It was sponsored by the Navy - I know. I'll never get away - and they had SEAL challenges and stuff.) Right before our race started (there were different events all day long.) a visiting NAVY Seal team (I wanted to know if it was SEAL Team 6, since that would be super rad... but I never found out.) did a fun parachuting demonstration. Then the race was on!

Free swag. And my civilian fingernails. :)

We were going to try to get in the 11 min corral, but we ended up stuck in the 14 min one and hit a massive human body road block. (There were 7,000 racers, and it was slightly disorganized...) El and I started off at a pretty good pace, but she started struggling pretty early, and I wasn't leaving her. It was 96* (or warmer..) and we were running on the sand. Neither one of us was ready for that. The conditions were actually kind of brutal, and it was so overcrowded.

I ended up running backwards a lot, trying to chat with Ellie, but she was being ridiculously anti-social. I'm thinking that iPod was a bad idea... Haha, just kidding. I didn't listen to mine most of the time, which is actually pretty sad, because I sure do love Adele a whole bunch. It's the first time I've ever ran without music, and it actually wasn't bad. I was so caught up in the moment, and pushing El, that I didn't need the music.

Biggest pet peeve of the day were the people just laying out in the sand or building sand castles right in the middle of where we were running. (The race was on a public beach, and I guess they didn't reserve the whole mile and a half of beach.) The race was a down-and-back, and the view was pretty much the same. The ocean. Certainly not a bad view by any means! There was one water stop, so you hit it twice. Not too bad for a 3.1 mi race, but they ran out of cold water, and were serving HOT water by the time we hit it up. It was awful. Haha.

We finished and instead of medals, we received Turtle necklaces, and they are really pretty. The color of your necklace was based on which event you participated in, and the 5k was turquoise. :)

After the race was over, we set out for our free beer, and then headed home to EAT.It was a really fun day, and I really want to do another race, and I think I will definitely be doing this one again next year.

Baby bro even got free beer. :) They were checking id's, and El and I forgot ours, so my mom had to use hers to sneak it for us. This was crazy in two ways. First, if you knew my mom, she doesn't drink. She hates drinking, and she never condones me drinking. So that alone was out of this world. And two. Um. I'm 24? I thought the sneaking alcohol days were far behind me. So I was kind of tickled to feel like a rebel again. :) Even if I am a legit rebel. Haha. :)

Funny story of the day. El and I went to watch some shirtless boys in some sort of challenge. We were watching them and I looked at El and said, "They sure are pretty." She looked at me and said, "Thank you." I replied with, "Not you. Them." Haha. She's still convinced I said her (well, she is pretty!) but I definitely talking about the boys. She went back and told my mom. You know. Cuz she worries about my sexual orientation sometimes. I giggled a whole bunch over this.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!