Monday, April 4, 2011

Thomas Giunta 5K road race


On Sunday, Nik & I ran the (long named) Officer Thomas Giunta Memorial 5K Road Race. It's the only road race in Fall River, and it starts only a mile from our house, so we decided to run it.


Since it was so close we decided to walk down there, pick up our T-shirts, run home to drop them off, run back to the start, run the race, then run back home afterward. Got all that? This is me after 2 of those miles.


This a city that loves its fatty food. We have one of the highest rates of diabetes in the state. True to form, the race served Portuguese malassadas as fuel before the race. These are chunks of sweet dough deep-fried in oil and coated with sugar. Normally they're much larger, but because this is a day for exercise they're cut into more reasonable fist-size nuggets. So you know, this isn't how you should carbo-load. 


More than 1,100 people ran the race, all of them crammed into one narrow intersection near downtown. We've got people from 5:30 minute-milers to walkers and everyone in between -- and no pace corrals. And they don't move cars off the street. And there are only two port-a-potties a quarter-mile from the start. So the first half-mile is like the running of the bulls and everyone's the bull, except you're hip-checking somebody who desperately needs to piss and flinging him into a 1997 Ford Probe.


We did pretty well on the race, considering how crowded the first half-mile is. Nik decided to run with me and make it a fun run. And my mom ran/walked it with some friends from work. It's not the most organized race I've ever run, but it's the people who make it great. 

Check out my race report on DailyMile here.

2 comments:

PlasTic said...

Thanks for the regular updates. The casual posts and photos make it really entertaining and fun to follow along. I'm curious how you two manage to fit in so many smaller runs while prepping for the marathon though. My wife and I got to a point at which we need to dedicate the weekend to our focused long runs and anything else would be either too short to be our long run (after we pass the half marathon point) or would make a run day out of our rest day.

Take care--

Staci said...

I love the malassadas! Not sure I could actually eat them before a run, but I love the idea. Sometimes a crowded, slow run is what we need to remind us that running is fun.

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