McGuire's Irish Pub 5K

The kids' Spring Break was March 12-16 so we had plans to go visit my sister and her family in Pensacola for the weekend.  We left on Friday and the 5K was that Saturday.  A few months before, we had talked about going down there to do the 5K with my mom and sister.  This would be my mom's 1st ever 5K.  My sister, Bonnie had done the McGuire's 5K a few years ago, and she told me that it was such a fun race and that lots of people run it, but I truly had no idea how BIG of an event it was!!

My mom began training back in January.  I found a 5K training walker's program on Hal Higdon's website, and she began using it.  She told me that it really helped her to have a goal to keep herself motivated to get out and exercise.  My mom is a nurse and works twelve hour shifts, so she was already pretty well trained for walking long distances since that's what she does all day.

Bonnie had told me that people dress up in all kinds of crazy St. Patrick's Day outfits.  So Mom made herself a cute vest that had shamrocks all over it.  Me being the totally unprepared person that I am, decided that I would just wear the 5K shirt from the race.  So speaking of the outfits here are just a few out of the 13,000 people that were at the race!

Whoa!  That's what we said when we saw this guy!  There were actually quite a lot of guys wearing these full body costumes!  So needless to say, we got a kick out of looking around at all the different crazy outfits that people had on!

We got to the race pretty early, and I still had to pick up my packet.  I remember massive amounts of people being everywhere you looked.  You would have thought the whole city of Pensacola was there!  They had people line up 30 minutes early so that it would give everyone plenty of time to get behind the start.  I remember it feeling like forever before the race started.  Finally when it was time the McGuire's Irish Pub Pipe Band performed which was really neat to hear all the bagpipers.  After they made all their announcements and sang the National Anthem, they fired what seemed like a cannon!  It was really loud!  And the runners took off!

I am not good about remember courses because I am the type of person that can only focus on one thing at a time.  So when I run, all I can think about is how I'm doing and how far I've gone and telling myself to keep going when I start to feel like slowing down.  But there were a few highlights I remember and that was getting to run along the Pensacola Bay (which is beautiful) and through the cute little neighborhood.  Once I finished, I met up with Greg and kids and talked to them for a bit.  Then I had plans to find my mom and walk the rest of the course with her.  I ended up finding Bonnie first and she was doing really great!  Once she finished we went back and found my mom.  She had the biggest smile on her face!  I remember once she got close to the finish line, we were all cheering her on!  It was a great moment to see her accomplish her goal!  I was really proud of her.

 Go Mom!!

After the race, we went to the post race party where they were handing out Irish Wakes to the participants.  And they were really good!   I need to learn how to make them!  We celebrated and listened to the guy that was playing Irish music on the stage and just had ourselves a good ole time dancing and having fun!

Since this was a prediction race they gave awards to whoever was closest to their predicted time.  I was off a little bit!  But my official time was 21:47 which was 7 seconds slower than my 5K PR.  They did give speed awards to the top 10 males and top ten females.  I think I was pretty close to the 10th place winner, so I was pretty excited about that!

David and I at the post race party. 

The boys posing with storm troopers.  They love Star Wars!

Grandma and Gracie dancing to the music!

This was before the race with the bagpipers playing.

After the race, we drove down to Pensacola Beach (beautiful!!) and ate at Peg Leg Pete's where we had delicious Shrimp Poboys - my absolute favorite!

Thanks to Greg for watching the kids during the race.  He said the kids were really good for him because they enjoyed seeing all the crazy costumes!  It was a great time and we made great memories!  We hope to do it again!