Corktown Race Report!

Last week, Jamie and I ran the Corktown Race in Detroit.  It was our first race of the year, and also our first time running this particular St. Patrick’s Day themed race.  We’ve done the Shamrock Run in Plymouth for two years in a row, but they moved it up a week this year, causing it to conflict with his last hockey tournament.  Instead, we decided to give Corktown a try…I’d heard many great things about it, and although it was only a 5k (Jamie likes to run 10ks), it sounded like fun.

The race didn’t start until 10am, which is awfully late for a race, normally, but it worked out well for us, because it gave me time to stop at the rink and drop off copies of the team DVDs before heading up to Detroit.  Although Jamie had to miss the last practice for the race, Jamie’s coach was very understanding. He used to be a runner himself, and he’s been very supportive of Jamie’s runs all season. His response when I sent him the text before the race:

Ha ha! He has a great sense of humor, our coach.

I wanted to get there as early as possible, because, although I love going to the city, I hate the logistics of it. 😛  I eventually found a place to park and we walked over to the starting line, which was right in front of the (in)famous train depot.

That depot has a long history, which you can find online.  I hear it was also in a recent Transformer’s movie, but I’ve never seen any of them, so I don’t know.

At the starting line, it was packed, but we managed to worm our way to the Corktown sign for a picture.

I had signed us up for the “11-minute per mile” pace group, since I figured we’d be running mostly for fun. So we ended up in the third wave, and it was pretty far back.

We found some hockey people while we were waiting…they recognized the logo on my jacket. (It used to be Jamie’s jacket, but it’s lined and is the perfect weight for running, so I stole it.)  We made sure to get a starting-line selfie before we got going.

Guess who got braces the day before the race? Do you like how he had them done in green for the holiday? 😉

It took a while, but eventually, we were off…sort of.  Turns out, the third wave is not where you want to be if you want to actually run. I will admit that I found myself frustrated with the number of people in the third wave who were walking. Dude, if you’re going to walk, go in the fourth wave!  We had to do a lot of stops and starts and weaving around people, which was really annoying. I don’t think Jamie was as annoyed as I was, but dammit, when I run a race, I like to actually run the race!  Eventually, it thinned out, and we went along at somewhere around an 11:30 minute pace.  Soon, we ended up downtown among the big buildings, which kind of startled me at first. The race runs in the Irish section of Detroit, which is called Corktown, and it’s not that close to downtown. It didn’t occur to me, though, that if you’re going to run an out and back, you’re going to go a mile and a half, and that will get you downtown.

Once we got among the buildings, the satellite on my GPS was all whacked, so it had us going much faster than we really were. In fact, it told us we were doing about an 11 minute mile, despite the fact that Jamie stopped to tie his shoe!  After we made the turn, the wind was getting a little stronger, and I had to take off my cool sparkly hat, unfortunately. Jamie had a good run at the end, even though he was rather uncomfortable because he had to go to the bathroom. 😉

It was a good run for him, considering he hasn’t been running very much lately, and we were really stuck there at the beginning. More importantly than his finish though, we had a great time! By the time we finished, the sun was out, and everybody was having a good time.

We stopped at the race booths on our way out, and I let Jamie pick out a new pair of (neon green) socks and a mug. And I managed to get a cool shirt, which I proudly wore a couple of days later on St. Patrick’s Day!

And, just for fun, I did manage to get a picture to post on Facebook for Jamie’s coach:

Ha ha, totally staged, but his coach loved it. 😉 (No, that’s not a real beer!!)

I wish we could’ve stayed for the parade, but we had a church function that I had to get to so we left after we made our purchases. But we both agreed that it was a lot of fun and we would definitely do it next year, and plan to stick around for the festivities afterwards. I also made him promise me that no matter where he is the year he turns 21, he has to come home for the weekend and run this race with me, so that we can toast with a green beer afterwards.  Of course, since his birthday is eight days AFTER St. Patrick’s Day, he may have to wait another whole year. 😉

I was very proud of him for running this race, especially since he had just gotten braces the day before!  He’ll be 13 in a couple of days, although he does seem like a teenager now most of the time. :p Still, he’s a great kid, and I am proud to be his mother.