Santa's North Pole Dash

This was my first registered 5k race of the year!! I find that kind of funny... But I forgot how hard 5ks can be. I signed up for this race mainly because of the BEAUTIFUL weather forecasted on the race day. The course goes through historic St. Charles, which is very scenic! However, running on the brick street proved to be a bit difficult.

Walking around historic St. Charles before race start.

It was super funny to see all the Santa's walking around. The race started by Frontier Park, which is where the Mo' Cowbell start is... 

Race Start.

I got into the race corral pretty close to the race start. After the horn blew, we proceeded to the start line and I "tried" to run. There were soooo many walkers, it was so annoying. Also, this lady basically pushed me to get passed me. Really?? Chill the ef down, lady. Anyways, I didn't feel very merry. I then moved over to the sidewalk, and didn't have any more issues. 

By the time we made it to the brick street, I had to run on the street because there were a lot of ped/observers on the sidewalk. It wasn't that bad because it wasn't as packed anymore. BUT, I kept looking down because I didn't want to trip, and missed all the cutesy of historic St. Charles.

I was so tired after mile one. I ran it in 9:04, which is faster than anything I've been doing lately. The uphill climb started after mile one. I wanted to walk so bad, but ran all of the hills and kept telling myself, you only have 2 miles left!! The last mile was the same last mile of the Mo' Cowbell Half Marathon. I was kind of laughing to myself because I was more tired here than I was on mile 12 of the Mo' Cowbell. 

I finished in 29:02. Not even close to my PR. Oh well! I placed good though:

Overall: 339/1917

Gender: 133/1296

Age Group 30-39: 40/308

And I got to get my picture with a reindeer: