Finished my first run!  Or a jog, as I really should call it.  It was the Halloween Hustle 5K in Palatine which benefits Fathers Helping Fathers.

That’s one thing that Mary Beth Beiersdorf pointed out to me.  Not only is this venture benefiting Salute but it’s also benefiting a lot of other worthwhile causes.  That’s something I’m really going to try to keep in mind when signing up for these runs and make sure that these are organizations that I feel comfortable with.  Maybe I shouldn’t even say something like that out loud since they probably are all good.

Getting back to today’s run and why I should call it a jog.  Because I’m really slow!  Ran this 5K in 30:47.  Being that slow really surprised even me!  I kept thinking that I ate a lot yesterday, drank a bit, didn’t get a particularly good night sleep…blah, blah, blah.  I’m just slow.  Another goal during this is to have my times steadily get better.  When I was running these in the 1990’s I was doing them at about a 7:20 minute per mile pace.  Don’t know if I’ll get back to that but 8:30 would be kind of cool.  Not going to use age as an excuse, though.

The race was fun, however.  Since it is Halloween weekend people were encouraged to dress up.  While I’m not a costume wearing type of guy, there were some great ones!  You’ll see that on the pictures with this post. Krysta came to this one and took a few of the pictures.  One we didn’t get was a couple celebrating their 25 wedding anniversary. The wife was in a wedding gown and the husband in a tux.  They also had the wedding party dressed up too, with a guy dressed as a bridesmaid!  It was pretty wild and funny.  Maybe Krysta and I will do that in two years!

As a reminmder in order to contribute, please click on THIS and it will take you to pledge page that Salute set up for me.

Next race is Saturday, November 5th at Cantigny, which supports the Midwest Shelter for Homeless Veterans.  Check back for that update.

Thanks for reading and your support!

Greg