She Is Beautiful-Pinkest 10K Race

 Today I ran the The Pinkest 10K in Santa Cruz. I first heard about the race from my friends and when I heard about the "pinkest" I just assumed it was for breast cancer. However this race benefited the Walnut Avenue Women's Center (domestic abuse counseling). 

I had never done an all girls race before and really wasn't too excited about it. I never really have been drawn to the whole "pink", "girl power", etc. stuff. But I had a great time!! The website is pretty cliche about running so we can "eat more chocolate and drink more wine" (!?!?) and racing for the "cute shirts" or to "impress a cute guy". (Ick!!) So I wanted to run with my running buddies but the website almost made me not sign up after I read that nonsense. 

This morning I really was lagging due to a couple of bad nights of sleep but I picked up my friend Maribel ( and yes she DID sign up for CIM!!!) and we were on our way.

They had parking about 2 miles away with lots of shuttles to the start. ( Parking was a bit expensive at $12! ). We got there right as the sun was coming up. 

Gorgeous.

The start/finish was at the lighthouse.

They had lots of fun signs throughout the course and at the start. 

We took a quick pic when we got there.

The 10K started at 8 and the 5K started at 8:15. We did our bib pickup that morning but you could have done it early on Friday night or Saturday morning. 

Waiting to start.

The course was an out and back mostly along the water and was well marked. 

They had maybe 3 water stops with pottapottys.

My goal was to run the whole course without stopping ....and I did I! Yay for me:)

My time was 1:06 with a pace of 10:40. I would love, love love to run a 10K under an hour but I'm super happy with my time.  At the finish line we ran into our other running buddies. And we picked up our shirts (which I assumed would be pink but were white.  Interesting). And walked around the vendors before we grabbed a shuttle and went to breakfast. 

And took one more picture and you can barely see the surfers out there but they were all over the place.

I will definitely run this race again.  I really love running near the ocean and love running with my friends  so I will throw on the pink  and enjoy every  minute of it.  Today really was good for my soul.