Huntington St. Patrick's 5k Review

Sunday was the St. Patrick's 5k in Huntington.  I planned on running with my twelve year old daughter.  She and I prepared for the race by staying out late the night before with the rest of the kids drinking red wine at our neighbor's house.  Well, I had red wine.  I'm sure they were whining about something.  I just can't remember.  Later that night, while hallucinating dreaming of how my daughter and I were going to smoke 'em at the race, my four year old threw up twice.  The stomach bug had arrived.  I cleaned her up and decided to postpone the 14 miles (17 total) I was scheduled to run before the race until Monday.  Ha.  Like running 14 miles that morning was going to happen, anyway...

The late start of 12:45pm might as well have been 7am.  Waking, feeding, and dressing four kids, all the while ignoring appeasing a disapproving "told you so" husband, is more time consuming than you might expect.  We were out the door at noon headed for the north shore.  We arrived at the Huntington library to pick up our numbers at 12:35.  My daughter was sound asleep in the back seat.  I threw a blueberry muffin at her head gently woke her up.  The ladies inside the library were packing up boxes and getting ready to leave.   I asked one of them if I could get our numbers and she scoffed that that ship had sailed long ago.  I was surprised at how unpleasant she was about it.  Usually, people at these races are much more friendly and accommodating.  Okay, so my daughter and I would run without numbers.  No biggie.  My daughter had other ideas.  She interpreted this as a sign we should forego the run altogether, go home, and go back to bed,  "No!" I said, "This is going to be fun!  Just the two of us!  Hey, let's take a pre-race selfie!"

Her enthusiasm was uncontainable.

The starting line was right outside the library.   We hung out at the back because my daughter's "knees" were bothering her (meaning, she wanted to go back to bed).  It looked like there were only fifty runners, maybe seventy-five.  I was a bit disappointed and annoyed.  I was expecting hundreds of participants.  If I had known, perhaps I wouldn't have had that third second glass of wine and perhaps I wouldn't have dragged my unwilling daughter along.  I had a good chance of placing in the top three overall women.  I coulda been a contender!!! 

The race started and my daughter let me know that she was only going to run one mile.  We ran down 25A and then made a right onto Route 110.  It was a slow incline, but it made no difference because not even a quarter of a mile down, she stopped.  I reluctantly stopped, too.  We turned around and headed back to the finish.  As we were walking back, the lead runners zipped past us.  They were flying downhill.  I wished I was with them until we came across a  furniture shop giving away free hot dogs and I forgot all about them.  But then I remembered I gave up pork eighteen months ago (dang it!) so I grabbed a couple for the kids.  

We saw Pete waiting with his camera at the finish line.  He wasn't happy to learn that we DNF'd, but not as unhappy as he would have been if we had paid two entrance fees instead of just one.  While waiting for the parade, we met a retired NYPD cop wearing a Hood to Coast t-shirt.  He ran it the year before I did.  He also knew a lot of cops in common with Pete.  The weather was perfect and the kids enjoyed the rest of the afternoon watching the bagpipers and fire trucks go by.  Not a total loss.

UPDATE:  Remember the stomach bug?  No Monday morning 17 miler thanks to him (Like that was going to happen anyway......)