The Grape Stomp 5k
This was officially my favorite 5k yet! It was held on a vineyard in Sonoita, AZ, which was absolutely beautiful.
There’s kind of a trend I’ve noticed with the races I’ve been to so far. There is usually quite a crowd and in those massive groups of people, they tend to stick to talking only with the friends or family they came with. There are a few people I’ve struck short conversations up with, but for the most part, everyone sticks with their own group.
Not this time! There were less than 50 of us there, most likely because Sonoita is in the middle of nowhere, so it involved a bit of a drive to get there. There were still people that came with their friends, but it was such a friendly group! Everybody just talked to everybody. I had signed up for a running meetup in Tucson that I have yet to actually attend since all of their events are on the other side of town, but the meetup organizer, who also happened to run this race, saw that I had registered for this race and was just walking through all of the runners asking if anyone knew who Becky was. She found me and she happens to also own a border collie that she adores, so we obviously became quick friends!
I made small talk with another fellow, Paul, before the race started and we ended up running the entire race together. I’ve run all of my races alone so far, just me and my iTunes running playlist. Running with someone else makes the race 10 million times more fun! We talked about running, our jobs, our families, our New Year’s resolutions, our mutual love of the Ellen show, and all kinds of other random things. Paul is almost twice my age and he runs half marathons…and he has me almost considering training for one, just to cross it off of my bucket list. He kept apologizing for “holding me up,” because he was running at his half marathon pace. Ha! Yeah…that was my 5k pace, Paul.
The course was more like a trail run than anything I’ve ever run before! It was really challenging. The ground was very uneven and there were a lot of uphill climbs, which made me even more grateful for the distraction of good conversation. And did I mention the blazing sun and lack of shade? My previous races have all been held so early in the morning that I haven’t had to worry about a hat or sunscreen, so I didn’t even think about grabbing sunscreen…which I regretted afterward!
Lesson learned.
But, like I said, everyone was just so nice! It gave such a different feel to this race. The course had us running multiple laps around the vineyard, so there were people marking tallies on our bibs as we ran by who would cheer us on. There was a lady handing out water who would joke with us every lap about not being able to hand us wine instead. Other runners encouraged each other and the people at the finish line called out motivation for the last stretch and excitedly congratulated us as we ran past them (it should be noted that I beat Paul by about 1.5 seconds).
My final time was 41ish minutes, which is certainly not my best time, but I was running much more for enjoyment than speed this race. And I definitely accomplished that goal! I ended up going out to lunch with some people afterward, including Paul, and so I came home with new friends and another awesome race t-shirt.
My next race is on Friday…it involves UV lights. I’m pretty excited! The more races I run, the more fun they are.
