3.12 miles in 29:21 @ 9:25 pace and 172/194 bpm for 443 calories

Early Saturday morning, Phil and I drove way south (i.e. south of I-635!) to run the 2008 Jogger Egg Nog’r 5K.  The race is a Dallas tradition, typically run in cold weather, and the big draw is the three different types of egg nog served at the finish line: regular, with whiskey, and with rum. If you don’t like egg nog anyway, drinking it at the end of a race hardly seems appealing. But if you are an egg nog fan, you’re probably like most people and still a bit skeptical—who wants to drink a thick, creamy beverage after a hard run?  Well, I love egg nog, and now I can say definitively that I love it even more after a race.

It was not particularly cold when Phil and I arrived, but a huge crowd had already gathered, including a junior-high boys cross-country team in full uniform and seriously warming up.  Phil and I jogged for a half-mile or so to get loose, laughed at the guy wearing nothing but a huge cardboard Christmas present (he was fast!), and lined up to start.  The race itself was relatively uneventful. Phil and I ran together until the very end, where he really pushed the last 100 yards or so and I couldn’t catch up.

After the race, I had three plastic cups of egg nog (1 regular, 2 with rum), a banana, and a cup of gatorade. When I was drinking my egg nog, another runner commented about how he could never drink egg nog after a run, and we joked about it a bit.  Later, when Phil and I were walking back to our car, that other runner (Phil, do you remember his name?) chased us down (“Hey. Hey! Hi guys!”) and persistently engaged in conversation the whole way (“Yeah, I work for Mary Kay, and they’re really into running there. Do you guys run with your coworkers? Really? Interesting!”).

I’d definitely run the Jogger Egg Nog’r again.  It was a good end-of-season race and fun to run it with Phil!