Sheeeeeeee’s electric! She’s in a family full of eccentrics! (Oasis fans in the audience? No? Just me then? Oh.)
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| Can I be electric too? |
Moving right along. As I detailed in my post about upcoming races, I signed up for the Electric Run 5K a few months ago, and when the day finally dawned (or should I say dusked?) it was a good one: not too terribly hot and not at all rainy.
The race instruction email promised traffic congestion due to the many race attendants and also because, duh, DC, so Scott and I arrived at the National Harbor about an hour before pre-race festivities were scheduled to start. We wandered along the harbor a bit, walked out on the pier, investigated some bizarre statuary, ducked into some shops, and then headed to the provided address for race pickup, where we frowned at a locked building for a couple minutes until a nice policewoman directed us toward the ACTUAL location. Emails are such liars sometimes.
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| …? |
Race pickup was provided same-day for a $5 fee. I thought this was somewhat poor form, given that pre-race packet pickup was available only on the preceding Wednesday and Thursday in Virginia, half an hour or more around the dreaded beltway for us poor Maryland participants, but what’re ya gonna do. Scott and I grabbed our packets, accepted a free can of Rockstar energy drink (verdict: fizzy but too fake-sugar-tasting), then went back to the car for a bit to eat some snacks and dig through our goodies.
Our packets contained an Electric Run shirt, a motion-activated light-up bracelet, some bizarre glowstick glasses that I didn’t bother opening, our bibs, and safety pins. The guy sizes were tech shirts, but the girl sizes were sadly plain ol’ cotton. Less sad: when I tried mine on I found it fit perfectly and was super cute, so score!
After a quick bathroom pit stop, we returned to the pre-race area around 7:15PM to investigate a mystery. A week or so earlier, I had received a strange email – a “receipt” for LED shutter shades, grand total $0.00. I asked around and was eventually directed to the store tent, where I was informed that as I was one of the first fifty people to sign up for the race, I was entitled to a free pair of light-up glasses. Scott was way more excited than I was, so I let him pick out a pair in his favorite color. Then we of course had to take multiple photographs to get the proper shot with all the lights on.
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| Complete with classy port-o-potty backdrop! |
There wasn’t much else to do in the pre-race area, so we went ahead and lined up for the race. There was an emcee and some assistants warming up the crowd with music and various freebies like glowsticks, hats, and light-up foam baton-type things.
There was no shortage of glowsticks handed out, believe me. One of them smacked me right in the nose, so I wound up a bit gun-shy; with every subsequent handful thrown, I ducked! People got quite creative with their use, Scott included.
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| They stayed in for approximately 60 seconds’ worth of distance run, which Robert Frost assures me is more than sufficient. |
The race began with a slight uphill followed by a delightful downhill lined with those glowing blow-up pillars as seen above. I think I may have turned on a little TOO much speed in my delight over the downhill segment, as we finished the first mile in 9:02 – not fast for a lot of you, but I’m usually more of a 10:00 girl!
I blame this on Scott. You see, he is one of those obnoxious natural athlete types who just does this stuff naturally. He swims and does yoga and plays soccer, but he doesn’t run much at all; yet he pretty much danced his way down the course and was barely winded. Stupid tall people with their long strides. Jerk! 😉 I held my own, and we did slow down and stop to take some photos later, but I’m sure he could’ve left me in the dust if he wanted to.
The course was punctuated, as promised, by music and light-up surprises.
