Jingle All the Way 5k

I ran the Jingle All the Way 5k this past weekend.  I was there with one of my usual running buddies and also with Mike! Since we had done the Disney 5k at my dad's pace, he wanted to try one more at his pace.  And I told him I'd stay with him to encourage him so we did this one at his pace.

I had done this race last year and loved it!  It's really well organized, has a scenic course downtown by the Capital and the smithsonians, and it is super flat. There was packet pick up at Pacers (the running store that puts on the race) for the couple days before the race but we decided to just do race day pick up.

In fact, we cheated a bit on the logistics of this one.  We found a super cheap rate for the J.W. Marriott in DC and this hotel is literally right across the street from the start line.  It's also a beautiful hotel so we decided to make a weekend of it and get a night at the hotel.  We came into the city Saturday afternoon, had a nice dinner, went clubbing for a couple hours Saturday night, and were still able to be in bed by midnight.  The race didn't start until 9am so we were able to get a decent amount of sleep.  We woke up at 8am and I went out and got everyone's packets.  It included a nice long sleeve shirt as well as a $20 coupon for any Mizuno purchase over $50.  We finished getting ready and head out to the start line around 8:45.  This was so nice to be able to do and not worry about transportation in the morning.  I know this was a one time thing though so I better not get too used to it :)

When we got out to the start line area, there were a lot of people milling about but not much of a line for the holiday photos so we went ahead and got a photo of the three of us. I don't have the photo yet but will add it as soon as I get it.  There were lots of people in really fun costumes, and even lots of dogs dressed up in festive attire.  There were 2 giant dogs in "reindeer in training" shirts that were especially cute. That's one of my favorite parts of this race, all the fun theming that people get into.

The race started on time and off we went.  I told Mike we would go for a 2:00 run interval and :30 walk interval but the run interval shortened throughout the race.  Poor Mike hadn't gone for a run in a couple weeks, mostly because he was too busy taking care of me!  But I was proud of him for pushing through.  Our official time was 46:56 for a 15:07 average pace.  My Garmin data shows it as 47:26 for 3.22 miles which is a 14:44 pace.

Here is a post race photo of Mike and me, sweaty but all smiles. We then found our friend and went back to the hotel.

Another good thing about having a hotel room is that we were able to clean up before heading to brunch.  We had brunch at the Hamilton and it was delicious.  I didn't manage to get a food photo since we were all starving and dove right in.  But I did manage to get a photo of our hibiscus mimosa.  It was delicious, and the flower was even edible.