What Was the Point Again?

There are 3 traditions on New Year's Day. One is to recover from the night before and watch as much college football as humanly possible. Two is to set you New Year's resolutions you hope to keep more than a month. And three is to sign up for the Point Bock Run in Stevens Point.

Number 3 is the only one with a strict deadline. Registration opens at noon and you need to decide if you are going to sign up, then must do so quickly. It caps at 2,000 runners and fills up fast. Not sure what my friend Chris and I were thinking, but we decided to register. Why not? We have 2 whole months to train even if we haven't been running. We ran a half-marathon together a few years back. How hard could 5 simple miles be?

Well when you get a silly idea, you sometimes are forced to act on it before thinking it through. We got registered and got in. It sold out in a record 1 hour, 44 minutes this year.

Needless to say, the registration part was easy. The follow-through, not so much. Between colds, cold weather. running on the hated "dread mill" and perhaps a lack of motivation, we were not exactly trained and ready for a command performance at the Point Brewery today. We knew going into it that we were going to have to run/walk it because neither one of us had trained enough to run without walking. Especially not 5 miles! Just no free time! (or something)

Spoiler Alert: We still survived!

Here's a little Point-by-Point guide on surviving this thing....

Step 1: The timing chip does not activate until you cross the start line. If you and your friend aren't prepped to run this thing, stand back by the walkers and slow runners. You know there will be 1,500 people finishing ahead of you anyway. So don't get in their way.

Step 2: Tough race ahead? Be sure to take your "glamour shot" at the Finish Line ahead of time.

Step 3: Because your tired, sweaty, post-race photo by the brewery will look like this!

Finally: Although they give you some free beer tickets on your race bib, the crowd of thousands under that tent aren't worth the hassle. Skip the tent and go straight for the good stuff!

And we deserved it. We ran more than we thought we would. We wanted to be sure we finished in less than an hour and 10 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes. In reality, thanks to a reasonable pace (for the old and untrained), we both finished just under one hour, 2 minutes. Pretty OK with that!

Naturally, we started having one of those stupid conversations like, "Wow, if we did a 5-mile race this good with no training, we should do another half (marathon)!"

Yeah, let's just wait first to see how our legs, back and bum feel tomorrow and Monday.

After all, the whole point of the run was just to have a fun girls' day out! Despite just-above-freezing temperatures and a very chilly wind, that part was a success. And we can certainly do that more often.

Get my Point?