Hermann London Halloween 5K

B's parents are visiting this weekend! His mom was one of the people who first inspired me to get into running competitively, and now B is showing a renewed interest in the sport. We toyed around with the idea of running a race together, and it was a done deal once I found out about a local Halloween run. Racing PLUS a costume contest? We're there.

After several phone calls to both of our parents, we decided to try for the "best group costume" prize and go as a shark, a swimmer, and a surfer/victim. Sharks have always been my favorite animals and this wasn't the first time I dressed as one for Halloween! B's parents stopped by my mom's house to pick up my shark costume from yearrrssss ago, and they schlepped that thing all the way to St. Louis. Meanwhile, we got our "surfboard" (old foam boogie board) ready for the race.

It was actually the first race that B and I ever ran together, so it was pretty special. He's usually my bag holder/jacket giver/man slave before races, and he hasn't competed since high school cross country. It was fun to see him get excited about running again!

Sleepy breakfast time!

We arrived an hour early because we bought our race entries from Living Social (great idea, by the way) and were worried that our registration might have been messed up. It all worked out great, though, and we used the extra time to drive back to our apartment to pick up the boogie board that I had forgotten. Brilliant.

Lots of people LOVED the shark costume. B wore a very realistic bloody T-shirt (thank you, gel food coloring) with goggles and a swim cap, and his mom wore a swim suit with goggles around her neck. We decided to all run together because I couldn't see a thing and the course was open to traffic. Nothing could possibly go wrong!

We ditched the boogie board 5 seconds after this picture was taken.

The course was a lot hillier than we were anticipating, and we lost B's mom early on. I, of course, took each hill as a personal challenge and sprinted up as fast as I could. B stuck with me and was a great guide..."car on your right...pothole...parked car on your left...hey, let's pass this lady!"

The mesh covering my face turned to steel wool sometime during the second mile, so I'm currently sporting a nice red nose. Not gonna lie - running in that thing wasn't a ton of fun. It was hot and I couldn't see, but it was neat to wave at little kids on the course and to pass people who weren't in costume. 

We finished at a 26:16 - not nearly as fast as we could have gone, but we were pretty happy with our times under the circumstances. I heard one guy at the finish line say to his son "Hey, you see that shark? It beat me!" Chomp chomp. 

We didn't win the costume contest, so it was obviously rigged. For what it's worth, the race director's wife came over to us said that we were her favorites! They had hot dogs and chips for the runners, so we hung out for a little while and listened to the band play. This was my first 5K - I gravitate towards the longer races - so it was a nice way to recover from last week's half marathon and have some fun with my family. 

Have you ever raced in a costume?