Pain Train

Saturday, the Wicked 10K was held in Va Beach, and Billy and three other Running Etc guys ran the race as a train.  Now when I first imagined this, I thought each guy would run in an individual box and that they would all be joined with some string or bungee cord...however, when I arrived at the race site long before anyone should be up on a Saturday morning, I was very surprised to find one 16-foot-long train in the final stages of construction. 


Here are some pictures from our early Saturday morning...

Finishing touches (still dark outside)

Jefferson tagged along as the pumpkin

Ready for the "drivers"

Strapping in (they all wore belts, which they attached to the PVC frame with rope)

About to head out

Practicing

Nice shot of the cow running alongside the train

A little over halfway

Billy bringing up the caboose (I had a tough time getting all of the train at once!)

My one good action shot!

Post-race...they finished at just over an 8-minute pace...while being a train :)

So, to keep with the train theme, by Sunday morning, we felt like we'd been hit by a train :)  This is how our weekend went...Saturday we were up at 5AM (I always think it's funny how we get up waaaayyy earlier on the weekends for races than we ever do during the week), headed out to VB by about 5:40, and got there around 6:20.  Billy and the guys put the final touches on the train, race started at 8AM, and we were in the car heading to Norfolk by about 9:30.  I dropped Billy off for work, and Jefferson and I headed to the dog park by Peta, which is such a nice dog park.  And it has a ramp into the Elizabeth River!  Jefferson ran around, hauling after a cocker spaniel for the first little while, and then he found Atlas, a golden retriever with a floating buoy play toy.  Atlas' owners were nice and shared the toy with Jefferson, who swam basically nonstop for probably 15-20 minutes and was very upset when I told him it was time to leave. 

Here are a couple of dogpark pictures...

After we got home from the dogpark, I went to one of our company's rental houses to clean, then came back and did some cleaning around our house until I had to go pick Billy up.  I got to Running Etc a little early since there's a new Skinny Dip on Colley that had its grand opening, which meant big discounts on their yummy frozen yogurt!  After he got off work, we headed for a workout and shower at the Norfolk Y, which is soooo nice...much nicer than when I used to workout there before I moved to Suffolk.  We grabbed a quick bit to eat at a Mexican place and then headed to a co-worker's house for game night.  So, that was all lots of fun, but by the time we got home around midnight (or maybe later), we were super tired and went right to bed.  And slept until close to 11!  We never sleep in, so that was really nice (and needed after our super long day).  We watched a sermon from Buckhead Church online, did some chores around the house, went to First Landing Park to run (well, Jefferson and I ran/walked, but we still went around 7 miles!), picked up some Halloween candy, and got home in time for the trick-or-treators to come.  Billy made dinner while I handed out candy and worked on my Bible study, so that worked out well. 

So, it was a very fun yet tiring weekend, and we're getting pretty good at making the most of our now-one-day weekends!  And, it's been good for me to do some side jobs while Billy's working on Saturdays, so that's good for some extra dollars :)