Smuttynose Will Run for Beer 5k

Smuttynose "Will Run For Beer" 5k

The best race I've been too, and yet the most unpleasant and my worst 5k time to date. Whatever though, there was free beer and really ugly race tshirts. (Seriously, guys. Comic Sans? Is it discounted or something because it's such a joke? I don't know how this stuff works. Oh well, free is free.)
The four of us (me, Claire, and racing newbies Pat and Jenna) set off for the Land of the Free at around 8:30 after some confusion about our Zipcar (mainly that it wasn't there). We arrived in plenty of time, and went to pick up our numbers (on a super-immature sidenote, Pat was dissapointed that Jenna & I got numbers 67 and 68 and he somehow got 219 even though we'd all registered at the same time. Oh, ha ha).
While the race was chip timed and pretty well organized, it was still very casual. There was a guy with a mic who just said "go!" and it got clogged up for a minute or two at the front.
It was shaping up to be a hot day. Many of the good residents of Newmarket had placed sprinklers on the side of the street and I made it my business to jump through all of them. I seriously think I might be the sweatiest skinny white girl on the planet. When I'm doing a hard run, my face gets so red people stare at me in alarm. Just sayin'.
Pat immediately took the lead of the four of us (of course), and then Claire was behind him and Jenna and I jogged together for a minute or two before I started pulling ahead of her so none of us ran together the whole time. There was a loop-around where other runners would pass us, and Claire passed me at the corner and waved, then when I came to that corner Jenna was running into the loop so I waved at her. She yelled "THIS SUCKS!" at me, apparently making a lot of friends in the back of the pack.
I managed to run mile 1, but was getting really fatigued going into mile 2. I really didn't want to walk, since that's been my main goal in all of this, but my vision started to go a bit blurry so I figured it'd be best to walk a bit so I slowed right before the water stop. I drank one cup and dumped another one on my head. The rest was kind of a blur, running through sprinklers and trying to keep my pace up but I ended up walking for probably 3 or 4 minutes on and off.
The last part was an incredible steep hill, and I charged up that, collapsing on the grass with a lame stupid time of 35:12 (11:22 min/mile). Pat did great with a 28:16, Claire did 31:02 and Jenna came charging up the hill at 35:56.
Surprisingly (or not?) we all really did want a delicious, cold, frosty beer after that. Smutty is one of my faves so I was pretty excited. There was also tons of free pizza, wings, chili, bananas, various sports drinks we lumped together as "Haterade", and of course karaoke to set the mood. We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking Shoals Pale Ale and Smutty IPA and eating pizza and chilling at the Old Stone Church. Really really good times.