I had a bit of a surprise weekend. I was looking at some stuff on Thursday night and I saw that Deena Kastor and Brian Sell were going to be running in the Gate River Run USA 15K championship.
After watching "Spirit of a Marathon" my wife is now a Deena fan, and I like the Brooks/Hanson team, and was excited about Brian going to Beijing in August. So amazingly my wife propositioned that we drive to Jacksonville to watch the race. It is only a 3 1/2 hour trip. So off we drove after work and a three mile run of our own. We stopped for Sushi at Publix (I know, how american of us) and the torrential downpour started.
We ate sushi on the way, and made good time, but still got to Jacksonville Stadium about midnight. We put the seats flat in the Durango and fell asleep rather quickly. Note to self, get some shades for the windows. Peeing wasn't a problem at night, however when awoken by EMF "unbelievable" it dawned on me to park closer to portopotties next time we do something like this.
When they say America's biggest 15K they ain't kiddin'. There were about 12K people in this race. The start looked like Chicago, but about 1/4 the size in reality. insane. Deena was given a 5 minute head start with 24 other elite women, then the cannons sounded and 12K people chased after.
I thought that there would be a crowd of spectators considering the Olympic runners there, but I think we were the only Deena fans there. And Brian shaved, so I was not 100% sure it was him, I did not want to look like a total moron congratulating him and finding out it was a team mate. I will edit this post when I get the pics from my wife's camera. But needless to say, it was a bit of silly fun to drive up just to watch Deena kick ass, which she did.
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