The Run For The Whales 2010 was a success!  It was well organized and well attended.  The photo above shows many of the people there but there are more!  My friend Ron said he read that there are about 700+ people who registered to run and or walk.

It was a fun day for me.  For me, it was challenging but good.

About a month Ron asked me if I wanted to join the pod they are forming for Run For The Whales 2010.  It’s the first time this year that the Pacific Whale Foundation included such category in the 5K Run.  For those of you who have not heard about it, a POD is when 3 to 5 people run together.  Most of the time they hold a rope, sometimes they are tied to it.  It is also known as the centipede run.

Since it’s still a month away, I said yes and told Ron I would start running again to train for this.  Well, I got busy and didn’t train, so you can guess what’s coming.

Last week, Cam called me to confirm my participation and to get my shirt size, I sort of panicked.  I knew I did not train and was afraid that I would slow the pod down. I tried to bail out.  I told Cam that if they have enough people to do the pod, count me out because I was afraid I’d slow them down.  Ron called me that afternoon to assure me that we are doing this for fun.  He also reminded me that we are doing it to send out the message “Help Keep Our Ocean Clean”.  We will run the best we can but no pressure.  He will set the pace of the pod according to my pace.  Ron and some of our co-employees ran the Run For The Whales 2008 so he knows I can do it.  What he didn’t know is how slow I did it.  Anyway, to make this long story short, I committed to showing up at the race and running with the pod.

Guess what happened?  at the day of the race, I did slow down the team.  There were several times during the run that I had to ask the team to slow down and walk.  It was not so bad at first, except when another pod passed us by. Nooooooo!  And so we tried to pass them again.  And we did.  But then again, my lungs and feet failed me because as we were getting closer to the finish, they passed us again and I could not ran any faster than I was doing.  In fact I had to ask my team to walk for a couple of minutes to give me a break.  Yikes!  my teammate were great and encouraging. I knew they could have passed the  “Atomic Girlz” if it were not for me.  They would have zoomed in the finnish lane sooner if it were not for my frequent request to slow down.  Breeeaathe…. breathe … run…. I tried as hard as I can to pass  the pod in front of us so we won’t have to keep looking at their cute behind with their tiny shorts marked Atomic.

See the Atomic Team who beat us. Can you spot them? 🙂

Well, we finished the race.  We did it! We even got Third Place! (Just don’t ask how many pods were there – LOL!) Below are some of the photos.

The "Help Keep Our Ocean Clean" Pod