Blueberry Race was a (Blueberry Pan-)cake walk.

The 8K Blueberry Race came about this Saturday, and I got up at 5:00am on the only day I can sleep in during the weekend. If running does anything, it snaps me back into a proper biological rhythm so I don't wake up late for work on Monday. Normally, my lazy ass would have stayed in bed until about 11:00.

I picked up my packet at the school's gym and had about an hour to kill. I stretched out, listened to some music on the headphones, took the phones off and listened to some pump-up music they had going (most of which was awful, but worked). I actually stopped some Local H on the mp3 player to listen to them blaring Ke$ha (blasphemy!). Yes, I know she's brutally awful, but I still, sadly, kind of like it.

After nearly an hour of stretching, I realized "hey, maybe I should find where this race is starting." As usual, when I'm without a clue, I just started following people, and it led me to a place that said 8K Start. I ran into a teacher from my old high school. He kinda close-talked me for a little bit, asked about my bro and sis and why they weren't out with me, and went into this long rah!-rah! speech about how if I keep on going I can be like this one guy he knows that lost 100 pounds and now wins some of these races. Thanks for reminding me I'm a fat guy there teach, I was not aware (see blog title).

Anyway, we started up and I ran by the 5K peeps, one of which being a girl I went to school with. We weren't really friends then, but she's always been a really nice, sweet girl, so I'm cool with her and all. I didn't jump out of the gate very fast, and just decided to set a pace similar to what I wanted for the 10-mile. By the time I hit mile 3, it was starting to feel a little too easy. I skipped all water breaks, and just kept chuggin along until I hit the track, and at the finish, I ran into the girl from high school again. Talked to her and her friend, who I assume went to school with us, and she figured I knew, but I didn't.

I talked to the other guy from work that runs, and lost the girls for a bit. I figured they were in getting pancakes, so I headed in for my blueberry pancake breakfast as well and they weren't there. They came in later with kids and husbands and things, and I didn't have room by me to sit. I think they probably figured I just tried to ditch them when I was looking for the guy from work and checking the results. Anyway, it felt kind of high school where I had probably made a social faux pas, and they figured it was me being unfriendly. If they went to school with me, they should just know I'm socially encumbered.

After that I tried to hurry home to catch church. That didn't happend because I spent too much time on the pancakes waiting for them to show up to be friendly, which managed to blow up on me anyway. So I cut off going to church after just going home, and got ready for the Tiger's game. After the run, driving to Detroit, sitting in the hot sun of a day game (which we did win 8-1 over Cleveland), driving back, and going to church, I was pretty much done. We went to bed about 11, which is the earliest in quite a while.

One more practice run with J tomorrow, and then Crim on Saturday. The 8K was easy, so that makes me even more convinced that I'm ready.