Still Alive

Much to my co-worker’s surprise, I’m sure, I ran in the 28th Annual Samson Stomp 5K run at the Milwaukee Couty Zoo this morning and lived to tell about it. How cold was it? The crappy camera phone pic to the left shows my car thought it was -3 F when I parked at the Zoo this morning. This was definitely the coldest weather I’d ever run in, but with probably 5 layers of clothing, it wasn’t that bad.

How did I do? Much better than I thought. The race wasn’t chip timed, but the stop watch on my heart rate montior says I ran the 5K in 30:18. (the 166 was my average heart rate.) I was going to be happy with anything under 40min, since that has been roughly my time on the treadmill lately, so to just barely miss a sub-30 5K was surprising. My official time, which is based off the race start time, will be a little higher, but not much. Probably under 32:00.With the cold, my son was unable to run, so I’m still looking for a race for him to run. I did give him my t-shirt since I probably wouldn’t wear it (I’m not a long sleeve t-shirt person.)

The race is organized to support the Gorilla’s at the zoo. Samson was a fairly well loved guy whose descendants still live amongst what is the largest Gorilla population in any Zoo in the US. My wife informed me the Milwaukee Public Museum just finished up a big exhibit on Samson.  There was one guy dress in a Gorilla costume that ran today. I managed to get a quick shot of him:

Update: My official time came in at 30:56