The Big Race!!

The training: 
This week, quite inadvertently, Otto and I signed up for a 5k running race. It was a fund raiser for the Seattle Animal Shelter and a dog friendly event. So, even though Otto and I are getting a little long in the tooth. And even though neither of us has run more than a short sprint after a squirrel (Otto) or a slow 400m in a workout (me) in who knows how long, we had a long talk and decided we were up for the challenge. (Actually I made an executive decision, as usual, but I like to pretend democracy.)

And it was fun! Actually, it was crazy, but fun too.  Every dog under the sun was there......

Big dogs!

Small dogs!

Dogs wearing goofy things

And a ridiculous number of Seahawk gear wearing dogs!

Otto was quite the athlete. He ate well yesterday, rested his legs, hydrated, went to bed early. Then was up with the birds to get his race on!

Comeoncomeon!! We're gonna miss the race!

Got his race uniform on. 

I think this is where the pre race jitters started to set in.

Now I haven't run an official 5k in about 6 years. And my last one was pretty fast (somewhere in the 22 or 23 minutes range, for me that's fast)! But, Otto is 11(ish) and I haven't run him in, uhm, maybe years. So I was thinking this one would need to be pretty slow.

The race: 
Fun! Running a 5k slowly is kind of awesome and pain free. Well, it is physically pain free, mentally it was a bit of a challenge. I had to turn off every competitive bone in my body. When we stopped to poop and pee I had to breath deeply as large numbers of people and dogs swooped by. When the weak, infirm or otherwise annoying were in front of us, we has to suck it up and sit on their tails. (That group would include a rather large woman, a 5 year old, and a very annoying overly tan speed walker.) At one point I passed (they weren't running at the time) a man who was trying to inspire his son by saying, when I race, I usually find someone in front of me who looks less fit than I am and try to pass them. A few minutes later when they zoomed by us, I said 'I hope I wasn't your target'.

The breakdown: (what good is a race without an in depth blow by blow that none of your audience cares about)
The internet is telling me that Otto is around 72 in people years. And let me tell you, for an old guy he was awesome! The first mile he kept a nice steady pace (w/ only one poop and one pee break). Then, just after mile 1 a dog passed us and I don't know if Otto just decided to be competitive or thought he knew the dog or what, but he burst into a 'sprint'. We were probably going a good 2 miles per hour faster than we had been. I was all for it. Unfortunately, after about a quarter mile of that we hit a hill and both of us decided that sprinting right before a hill might not have been our best game plan.

The top of the hill coincided with the end of mile two. We stopped for some water (in a big kids swimming pool) and at that point I think Otto decided we'd run plenty far enough. This was a damn shame because the last mile was .5 miles down hill then .5 miles to the finish - a perfect recipe for fast! I kept trying to be encouraging 'good job', 'we're almost done' 'you're doing so good' 'just a little further'. But it didn't matter. I heard one father tell his small girl child, you have a cramp? Pretend you're Lebron and keep going. So I tried it on Otto, but although it seemed to work for the father, Otto merely decided it was time to pee. Even with only .1 kilometers to go, there was no speeding up (whose child is he??).

Results:
We finished in 30 something (ie less than 31 minutes). Otto was a true rock star. Maybe he even won his age division??

Robyn, Yumi, me and a bunch of tired dogs who have no time for posing!

Nap time?

Current status.

Next year we're thinking if we eliminate the poop break we can break 30 easy!