for me, my first marathon, oops, not marathon because it wasn't 26 miles - so my first run. haha ok, i lied again - my first official 8 mile walk with 27,000 people! with my friend, carol garnier by my side, i participated in this year's great aloha run hosted by kaiser permanente. i always wanted to participate in a marathon, but since i'm not a huge fan of running, i never did. when carol approached me to do this with her, my only stipulation was if we walked it. she agreed and there began my "training"!
my morning started off at 3:30am - 3:30am!!
carol & i were on the road by 4:45am.
there were busses to shuttle us from aloha stadium to downtown. we still had to walk a few blocks to get to the starting line.. to give you an idea of how early it was... THE MOON WAS STILL OUT!!
i don't ever recall being awake to see a sunrise... but of course, i'm in hawaii, i'm changed, therefore i got to witness a beautiful sunrise~
starting line!
everyone is passing us up...
so we "try" to keep up for a bit, but we figured we rather walk and enjoy ourselves. ;)
there was a balloon dragon running also - maybe in celebration of chinese new year??
carol & i had THE best time people watching... we saw a dad carrying his daughter on his shoulder - can you imagine?!
"choke" people participating in the run! ("choke" - pronounced chohhhk, means a lot in pidgin) i'm learning pidgin - it's quite entertaining when i try. that's for another time..
so many different kind of people participating - young, old, parents and their kids, babies in strollers, people in wheelchairs. it was amazing to see a local community get together.
walking ON the freeway! so cool!
almost half way..
army men hunched back carrying their heavy backpacks! that's some hard core training...
almost pau!!
we realized (when we were almost finished) that we didn't even stretch before the race started! stupid!
our legs and thighs were starting to hurt towards the end.
once we saw the stadium, we knew we were almost finished!
haha, we were excited we were almost finished!
this one camera guy tried to tell me, "don't act like you work for roy's!" so this is the photog of me telling the brotha that "i do work for roy's!" then he proceeded to ask for my name and told the runners to come visit me at the restaurant! haha that's FREE marketing for you! perfect!
carol & i had so much fun copying the billboard and taking pictures of ourselves! congratulations to us!!
that was our time. not to bad, right?. i thought we'd finish a bit earlier, but we were cruising the whole time - talking, laughing, making fun of other people, trying to see if there were any good looking guys... that was a negative ghostrider on the good looking guy part. fail!
just to give you an idea of where we walked... we walked on the side walk, under freeway overpasses and even on the freeways. not much of a sight seeing walk, but it was a nice day so it was an enjoyable 8 miles.
i checked the results i came in 18,500 out of 19,245. hahahahaa. at least i beat 745 people, right?? i promise to do better next year!
carol & i were starving, i mean starving. we couldn't wait to eat. we decided to go indulge ourselves and stuff our face after working it out. i took her to cafe kaila - as you can see, we ate like champions!
my hope is that next year, some of my staff will join me next year and we can represent roy's together. :) good thing i've been working out lately because i felt great after my run and wasn't sore at all!
below is a picture that makes me smile... these are three local boys that work for roy's - kenny, patty-cakes and kula-bear. those things on their faces - little hello kitty confettis. funny thing is, they deliberately put those on and willingly let me take a picture of them. cute, yah?!
Look like you guys had a great day. Hope we can join next year. D & M
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