2010 Godiva New Year's Day 8K

[Pictures from the race are here]

New year's day started fairly typical. Shannon and I were both moving really slow from drinking too much champagne and eating one too many of Melissa's persimmon cookies the night before. By the time we got out the door it was like 12:35pm, and Godiva's New Year's Day 8K started at 1pm in Durham.

"Right or left?", I asked Shannon, who was really car sick from my driving and having trouble reading the directions.
"Left. I think I have to throw up."
"Hold on almost there...wait I think this is the wrong way", 5 minutes before the race started and we were lost.
"Really, I am going to puke", she said as I did a quick u-turn.
"Wait I think that was the school", I did another u-turn and we were there.

Shannon ran and got our bibs as I parked and we luckily made it to race with minutes to spare. I was still in "hurry up" mode from the car ride, so when the race started I bolted out sprinting like I was late for something. I ran the first mile really fast and then quickly ran out of gas. The course was fairly hilly, and I struggled up the hills. At one of the turn-arounds I slipped on something and got bit of "trail love":


Towards the end I was so tired and slow I let some really old guy named Paul pass me.
Shannon ran with her camera, and got a lot of great pictures, including this one, where Kim Donaldson almost got ran over by a couple of deer:

While looking at all the pictures from last year I noticed something. A friend of ours, Heiko Rath, is at every race. And I mean every race. I have a theory that he is some sort of supernatural being who appears at every running race anywhere and everywhere, even ones happening at the same time. So this year, I will keep a look out for him, to see if this is the case. Yup! There he is:


Afterwards we hung out and socialized, and we got to meet Godiva's newest member, Sam:

He must have been injured or something because he didn't run.

When we got home for the race, we found that the dogs had eaten the rest of Melissa's persimmon cookies, which was probably fortunate for me.