Kids Camp USA 5K

Note to self – Never plan a get together celebration dinner party thing the night before you have to get up early for a morning race. This is particularly true when the party crowd happens to be Belly Dancers.

Kimberly and I ran in the Kids Camp USA 5K race this weekend. Considering with the above mentioned get together at our house we both ended up with about 3 hours or less sleep, I think we did pretty good. Heck, we did good just getting up at 5:40 seeing our heads didn’t even see a pillow until after 1:00.

Anyway, enough of the complaining (err excuses), we had a great time both at the race and of course with the friends at the get-together. Kids Camp USA seems a great cause. We of course found the race, then found the group behind it. Kids Camp sponsors various events for young ones such as (what this event was supporting) a camping trip to Apache Lake for 100 plus kids. There is no criteria per se for the kids to attend, just youngin’s in need of some adult support for a good time. They really seem like a good group and we will for sure see what we can do to help ongoing.

The 5K was at Thunderbird Paseo Park. One of our favorite venues as it is fairly close to home, is in the SPR canal, and makes for a good out and back track. A couple mini hills up on the course but nothing drastic. The event was run by Arizona Running Events Company and as always, good folks who make these small races as professional and fun as possible.

The race itself was fairly typical, although it ended up being a tad short for a 5K. My Garmin showed 2.8 miles and in fact when they posted the Results they listed it as 2.8. While I do look down on occasion at my Garmin timing watch, I had not for the last mile or so. You can imagine my surprise seeing as I was coming up to the finish line and seeing a little over 19 minutes (I'm not that fast in a 5K)!

Again with the qualifiers, the Mrs. and I had good runs. I think I felt as rough as I have during a run for quite some time, but still managed to come in 8th overall (19:30) though I was 4th in my age group (dang old guys need to stay home :-) ). Kimberly took home the “Bling” for the family with a 3rd place metal in her age group. I told she was a rock star – 3 hours sleep and still getting in on the metal action!

After enjoying the post race festivities and grabbing the metal, we hung out and did another 7-8 miles or so in the canal – got to keep up with those long runs you know. And of course, as always, there was a Sunday nap…