8K in BA

This morning Amanda and I ran an 8K in Puerto Madero at the Ecological Reserve. Emily's host family (actually just host mother) helped organize the event, which benefitted a hospital foundation. Even though it was rough to wake up at 7 with the intention of running 5 miles in a race, I'm glad I did it, and it was really fun!

I finished in 38:50, which is a good time for me! I was surprised I finished that quickly actually ... Amanda won her age group (unfortunately, with 20-hood, I passed into that older age group ....) with a time of 34:10 or something like that.

There were a couple funny parts of the morning that are quite representative of Argentines and their exercise. First of all, everyone had a cute race outfit. Even the slow and un-intense runners looked professional just because they were all dressed up in Nike workout outfits! When people started to run, then you could determine who truly deserves to wear those .... :-) They were selling Nike workout clothes at the race too, so in case you didn't have an outfit, you could buy one there!

Also - they didn't offer water/Gatorade/granola bars/bananas or anything like that. There was, however, a table of mate and alfajores. (Their tea-like drink and dulce de leche cookies). How healthy!

Likely the funniest part of the morning was the pre-race stretch, which was actually orchestrated by a fitness instructor on a stage with a microphone, and background music! They started blasting the music, and the guy called out stretch/warmup commands! It was essentially a group fitness class going on before the race. I wish we had gotten a picture of it, but unfortunately we'd ditched Amanda's camera just a bit before.

We got t-shirts for participating, and (one good part about fancy workout clothes here) the shirts they gave us are nice black synthetic shirts. No cotton to be found anywhere, here!

Anyway, overall fun morning! I'll post Amanda's pictures once she uploads them.