Summer Scamper 2015

You know one way to prolong a cold? Run stupidly hard for 3 hours, barely sleep, wake up at 6am the next morning and run another 6 mile race way faster than you should. Then think you're ok, barely eat anything both days, and do groceries and prune your tomatoes for the rest of the day.

Sorry, that was me virtually slapping myself in the face for this insane weekend. I'm okay now. *deep breath* Here's my race report for today's Summer Scamper.

I woke up this morning at 6am after another restless night due to my continued cold. I will be so happy when I can breathe out of both nostrils in my sleep.

I carpooled with two of my co-workers, and we arrived around 7:25. Parking seemed to be pretty plentiful, although there were a lot of cars in a long line waiting to be parked. If you do this race, it's best to arrive obnoxiously early to avoid a late start.

I hopped out early and picked up my bib to be safe. I also hit one of the many porta-potties that to my amazement had NO line. My bib came with this adorable light blue tech tee. I'll be happy when the Summer Scamper actually gives out women's shirts as well, but I understand that it's difficult to make cost and numbers speaking. I just never wear the men's smalls, my 5'0" frame drowns in them.

I was super thankful that they had a really easy gear check there. They had paper bags and just wrote your bib number on them. I had mindlessly jumped out of the car with my keys and jacket, and now the summer scamper shirt that I didn't know what to do with, so that solved that problem.

I had convinced a group of approximately 20 people to sign up for this race, so we tracked each other down at the starting line. Storm8 graciously allows me to design team shirts for this race, and it really helps us find each other amid the thousands of people attending.

The Summer Scamper is one of the two races (the other being the JP Morgan and Chase Corporate Challenge) I spend organizing for our Storm8 group because it is a well supported, highly attended, family friendly and walker friendly event. People have the choice of a 5k run, a 10k run, or a walker. It is important to note that they close down at 9:30 which means you need to run/walk faster than a 15 min mile. There's also four kids runs splitting them up between ages 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10. Being a race that is created to fundraise for the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, it is a very family friendly event. The cherry on top was that it's Father's Day today! Kids had a lot of fun playing the games in the finisher's area.

Back to the race. A group of us had decided to push forward toward the middle of the 9 minute mile pace corral. One of my co-workers mentioned that she wanted to finish in 58 minutes, which came out to around a 9:25 pace, so I thought I'd stick with her and try to help her to her goal.

We bolted when the gun went off. It was quickly clear to me that her 9:25 pace was a LIE and that she was a shark in the water. Here are our mile splits.

2015's Summer Scamper

This is the third or fourth year I've attended, and this route this year was different than last year. Last year I vividly remember a hill that surprised me in the middle.. This year we went up a little bit and then down hill a lot. We were all groaning about all the downhill since we knew it would go up again, but amazingly it didn't. I guess in the first couple of miles we were going up an unnoticeable incline.

2014's summer scamper

The weather was definitely sunny and warm out, but not unbearably so. There was a cool breeze, and a lot of the streets that we ran on were shaded. There were plenty of aid stations, but I tend to not hit any aid station that's under a half marathon's length. There were also plenty of supportive and sweet volunteers cheering everyone on. A giant thank you to them for their time and energy.

Photo courtesy of my friend Masato

My only issue with the race was that the mile markers were off and I'm fairly confident that the course was short. I wasn't cutting the tangents too much, yet my watch had still only clocked 5.8 miles, not the 6.2 that is a 10k. When we hit the 5 mile marker, my watch had only displayed 4.5 miles. :S My friend mentioned that the 5k course also was a bit short. It's CERTAINLY okay for me, and I definitely didn't need the extra .4 miles, but to those that were aiming for a serious race PR it's something to note.

Either way, we finished strong with a time of 49:20. My co-worker demolished her time goal, to the displeasure of my already sore legs. It was worth it though.

I hung around the finish line to catch my other co-workers crossing through. Everyone had done so well, and it was a really beautiful and happy morning with a lot of good energy. I was really shocked when one of my ol' running partners ran through with both his 1 year old son in a stroller, AND his dog Truffle.

We wrapped up with some group photos, and then I took a brisk walk around the finisher's center where they had quite a few booths set up with freebies and samples. I didn't partake in the post race food, but I noticed some bagels and fruit. Since I had raised $425 (thank you to everyone that had donated), I got this little frame for free. I'll have to print out one of our group shots.

Not my family. 

All in all, I think it was another successful race for Storm8, and I'm hoping we'll be back with another group next year! There's not much that makes me happier than seeing or helping other people reach their goals, so I was thrilled to hear that so many people had done so well. I know that the hardest part for most people is rolling out of bed at a ridiculous hour on a Sunday morning, so thank you all for doing that. :)

After the race, I continued buzzing around, getting errands done. After a full day I decided to lay down for a quick nap which turned into a two hour battle for consciousness. My legs started to get super sore, especially my calves. Anddd I'm still sniffling, so I'm going to chill out for a while to let my body heal up. MUST BE STRONG FOR MY BABY CHICKS.

But check out the coop! It now has a roof and is just waiting to be primed and painted!

Alright, enough talking, more sleeping. :) Thanks for reading!