Jingle in July – Post Race Recap

I haven’t done a real good running post in awhile!! This should be exciting! Check out my Jingle in July – Pre Race Review.

For the sake of seriousness of this race….I had none! lol! Seriously, I really didn’t expect to do anything of value during this race. After all, I was on vacation. I mean, I’m not a lazy vacationer, we went hiking and walked a lot, but I was’t running. Luckily, it was only a 5K.

I found this race the same way I find most of my races, just searching the Running in the USA website. It did look fun! And it was, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t going into this race with much “race attitude.” With that said, do you guys ever sign up for a just for fun race, but still have a secret, potentially unrealistic, goal?? In the back of my head, I had the notion that being at pretty close to sea level, maybe I could potentially set a PR……maybe.

However unrealistic my secret goal was, I had to complete my race no matter what! After all, why go all the way to Alaska and not run a race!?

For good measures, I brought my santa hat all the way from Colorado just for this one day. (And yes, I DID get to meet Santa!)

HO HO HO

I do not recommend wearing a santa hat on any other regular run because it was a sweaty, hot mess. I couldn’t put my hair in a pony tail, I had to braid it, which added to the hot messy-ness.

Sexy and I know It

The event was pretty fun indeed – minus the horrible christmas music (yes, they even had N’sync christmas carols). They started this event off with a costume contest. The winners were a bunch of clowns – literally. I don’t like clowns, so there will be no pictures of that. The king and queen of the North Pole were there (and they were not just for the costume contest – as much as I understood, I believe the city of North Pole votes on a king and queen every year). Shortly after, a local fitness club did a warm up zumba dance routine. Not too many of the crowd participated as most were just watching the cute leader instead.

Our race packet included jingle bells of course! I tied mine to my shoes!

Finally, it was race time. I actually was getting nervous, strangely enough. There’s something about a starting line that really can kick your competitive drive on. I sized up the crowd of about 400 participants, maybe I could turn this into something good! I waited for count down – brought to us my Santa of course –  and we were off!

The starting line

THE COURSE ITSELF: The course was pretty decent. Half asphalt/sidewalks and half gravel. Starting at the Santa Claus House, the first part wound through a wildlife refuge area with lots of shade and pretty views. The second half of the race was just on the roads around town. No hills, luckily for me, I don’t think I would have made it up any hills!

THE RACE: For a majority of this race, some young kid chose to pace with me. I’m pretty sure he as like 12 years old, and I laughed in my head at his immature, gangly-ness. He was a decent but clumsy runner, and I’m sure as he gets older he will get much better form, but I left him in the dust!

It was an hot day, actually. Well, warm. I should have ran in shorts, but that’s ok. The hat didn’t help either. Despite the unexpected heat, I did set a PR!!! Crazy, huh!? So, my new 5k PR is officially 24:15.6! WOOT! Only a handful of seconds faster, but still! I also placed 12 our of 240 women. I’m pretty proud of myself. My awesome, personal photographer got some pretty awesome running shots of me too!

I’m laughing at Alaska Man

There are two things I didn’t like about this event is 1) It took a week and a half to get the posted race times, which I’m really disappointed about. I spoke to one of the directors at the race, and he told me they would be online and in the paper. For obviously reasons, I wouldn’t get a paper (he actually was super nice, and after telling him I was from CO, he was super excited that I had come all this way). I also contacted the listed email for the event (who was different than the man I spoke to) and she emailed me back saying they would be posted sometime last week. She gave me the link to the same jingle in july website where I was already looking. Finally, a week and a half later, I got my official time. Without it, I would have had to claim my new PR as unofficial – and I also couldn’t remember the exact time!

Number 2) thing that I didn’t like about this race was that it was a one of those events where they constantly want you to raise money for their foundation. Even when you register is asks for an additional donation. Now don’t get me wrong, I choose to do events where the proceeds go to good causes and charities, however, I’m not a fan of the ones that want you to select a goal fundraising price, and expect you to email all your family and friends to pledge their money – maybe if it was a cause that was super dear to my heart it would be slightly different. But so far, I have yet to find that one cause that gets me in the fundraising mood. It reminds me of when I was in high school volleyball and we had to do letter writing campaigns to send to our family asking for money, and I hated it. This foundation even sent me A LOT of emails before the actual event just asking if I raised money, and I only registered 4 days before! It was kind of annoying.

Overall, though, it was a great day, good run…they even had hotdogs for a post race snack!! Here some more awesome running shots by my personal photographer!!

I don’t know how well you can see it, but there’s totally a guy puking up ahead of me in this photo!

Right before the finish line, I saw the clock and HAD to get a PR!