Celebration in the Oaks 2 mile Run/Walk
4:00 p.m.

Today, Kristina and I ran the Celebration in the Oaks 2 mile Run/Walk and we were awesome! The race is through City Park, which at Christmastime was a huge light display called, yes, the Celebration in the Oaks. The race route is through the streets of the park, with big lighted displays to look at while we ran. It is a big race, and the beginning was really crowded. (A lot of walkers were at the front. Sigh.) Kristina created a path that I followed, and it took us about half a mile to get to where we could sort of settle into a pace. We hit the one mile mark at exactly 12:00 (this is by my watch, not the official start time, since it took over a minute to get to the start line) and Kristina urged me to run faster. I had told her she could go on ahead without me, but I’m glad she didn’t because I wouldn’t have done nearly as well if she hadn’t been pushing me to go faster. There was a block left (but you have to turn a corner first, so we couldn’t see the finish line and didn’t know it was so close) when I looked at my watch and it said 22:something. I sprinted to the finish, and when I stopped my watch, it said 22:55! Our last mile was 10:55! I can’t believe I ran an entire mile at that pace! It was incredible! Yay!

We didn’t place or anything, they don’t even give finishing tags after the first 500 runners, and we certainly weren’t those, but it was a fun race, and I’m proud of myself for doing it so fast!