10k . . . plus some?

So, I signed up for a 10k that I ran on Saturday Jan 30th. I was training pretty hard because one of my 50 life goals is to place (1st 2nd or 3rd woman) in a race. I figured I would be more likely to achieve this with a shorter race and while I don't have kids. I got sick the week before and wasn't able to run for like 5 days, so I decided to try for placing in my division, 20-29 women.
I really enjoy races, I tend to have an anxious excited feeling even the day before. I made myself a playlist on my ipod and got in bed a little bit early (12am). After a lot of rolling around and thinking about pace and what my time should be at each mile, I heard, "Olivia?". . . . Me: "Yeah?" Joseph: "Stop thinking about your race and go to sleep, it's already 1:15." Me: "Ok."

Lining up. Can you find me?

This is what the course looked like. The race was held on a farm with muddy dirt roads with tractor tracks. It was scary watching people in front of you land wrong on their feet and twist their ankle. Luckily they weren't injured enough to keep from running. This farm, like many farms, had many roads going north, east, south, west, in a grid. The problem with the course is we had half marathoners start at 8am, 10k racers start at 8:10 and 2 milers start at 8:20. All with the same starting line and finish line. Anyway, I passed the mile marker 3 and the first drink station without stopping, I could wait till the 2nd station. There were a couple turns that weren't exactly marked, but the 5 people in front of me were running, so I followed.

It was so strange, at about mile 4, we had a group of about 10 of us as far as I could see. There was about 6 way in front of us and should be many behind us. I was pretty focused and thirsty to even wonder. Where was mile marker 4? . . .or 5? Why am I feeling so tired? Finally, the question that really made me wonder. Why did my play list run our of music? I had 50 minutes worth on there, didn't I? FINALLY, I saw the finish line about .25 miles around that turn of trees, so I ran hard. Right before passing the finish line I looked up at the clock. . . 51 minutes!? But, I trained so hard. . . I was glad I took off my headphones in time to hear the man in front of me with his cool gps watch say, "Umm, my watch says we ran 7 miles?"
All confused, we gathered at the map of the course and realized what happened. That group of 10 of us ran about .5 miles too far east and then .5 miles too far west at the next turn. Oh well, I thought. At least my time was a lot better than I thought. Apparently people were so upset that the organizer of the event had to come on the microphone to apologize.
Well, we figured only some people ran off course and with an extra mile, there was no way I would have placed in my division, so we made our way home.


It was a really fun morning and it was nice to run it with Aubrey and have Joseph there supporting me. He seemed to enjoy himself, he told me about the crocodile he got to pet at one of the booths, while I was running :)

That night while I was preparing my lesson, I checked the results. I couldn't believe it, I acutally got 2nd in my division. They were nice and sent me my medal too.