Fit Cajun Chick: {Funny thing...}

Almost daily I think of something to make a post about. Daily I forget to make said post. So, one thing I've wanted to make a post about is my monthly 5k races. I am still running in them. I even bought the next 5 months worth of registrations. The only thing that makes that scary is my work schedule. My work schedule is so crazy, but known, that I scheduled these races on days I know I have off. If a race day changes (like this months), it could definitely throw a kink in things since it seems like for the rest of the year I'm working most weekends.

Anyway, so on to my previous races! I don't think I spoke about May, June, or July's races. May was the Drop Your Drawers and Run Wild 5k. This race benefits kids in need getting underwear. For instance, they sent a whole bunch of underwear to Oklahoma after the huge tornado. This run was at what's become my favorite race park, City Park and afterwards there was a private after party at the Denver Zoo with 2 drink tickets (beer or wine). I had some pink ruffled panties I'd bought for a Halloween costume one year so I wore those over my running pants and an awesome tank-top my parents bought me for my birthday (an early b-day present).

Seriously, the green man photo is positively my favorite!

June was a 5k race in Estes Park, Colorado. This is an absolutely beautiful place to run but terrible to do so because of the elevation. I've become use to running here in Aurora at 5,471 ft above sea level. As use to it as you can get anyway. The beginning elevation for the Estes Park 5k is 7,522 ft above sea level! While it may not seem like much of a difference, and I ~~naively~~ thought this as well, it was terrible. When I began running I immediately felt it. To top it all off we gained about 100 feet in elevation in the first mile and a half. I have no problems admitting I walked most of the first 1.5 miles of this race. The nice thing though is the last 1.5 miles were ALL downhill...steeply downhill but that part was nice.

The Stanley Hotel
(The inspiration for the book/movie The Shining by Stephen King.
The TV series was filmed here also.)

The Stanley is the white building on the left side of the photo

The view of of the Rockies on my drive to Estes Park, Colorado

If anyone ever gets a chance to visit Estes Park, CO and Rocky Mountain National Park, I highly recommend it. It's positively beautiful. I can only hope that I'll never run a race in higher elevation again! haha!

July's race was terrible. It was the Firefly Run and was supposed to be on a Saturday night at City Park (my favorite park to run a race in). The Firefly is a night run with glow stick goods and good music and parties and all that jazz. It was moved though to Friday night at Dick's Sporting Goods Park. Luckily, Friday night worked with my work schedule. The picture of the running route at Dick's did not look promising though. It looked like it was through a lot of parking lot. I tried to keep an open mind though. Oh, we had to pay $5 for parking also! So far, all of my races have had street parking or free parking. Well, I get there and the pre-race party seemed fun enough. I was by myself though (as I am for all my races but one so far) and I'm a shy person so there's only so much fun that can be had! The race began and it was entirely through the parking lots of Dick's Sporting Goods Park. Entire. Race. After 1.5 miles the ankle I had surgery on a few years ago began hurting. It occasionally hurts me but usually stops after a little bit. This time, however, it did not stop. I'm pretty sure I began overcompensating for it because then my hip on the same side began hurting. Really bad. It was terrible and the most pain I've ever been in while running. I did stop to walk to kind of walk out the pain but walking just seemed to make it worse. I didn't stick around afterwards for the post- race party. I was in too much pain and not happy with just having ran around the parking lot I had to pay an extra $5 to park my car in.