Grand Rapids and the Irish Jig 5k

Today I ran the Irish Jig 5k in Grand Rapids. It was snowing this morning! It was really fun to run a race on the same roads that we would run distance runs nearly everyday at Calvin. The race went pretty well. I had done my research and knew that there were two girls that could run sub 17 so I went out in third. Unfortunately I had about 10 people right on my shoulder for the first 1.5 miles. I didn’t like the feeling of having so many people right behind me. However, at mile 1.5 there were a ton of people cheering and a lot of people from Calvin so that gave me a boost so I picked it up and dropped the people on my shoulder. I ended up with 3rd (18:10) and 175 dollars of prize money. Ends up the 1st and 2nd place girls didn’t run nearly as fast as previous years which made me wish that I had tried to go out with them.

After the race we went out to Starbucks. Dan has been working as a barista and gets a big discount. Then we went back showered and went to lunch. Emily joined us for lunch (along with Dan, Tad, Chris, and Gries.) We went to an Irish place in East Town. They offered a 20% discount if you had run the Irish Jig. The place was really cool- lots of dark wood and a cool ambiance. After lunch Emily, Dan, and Gries showed me the new field house at Calvin. Pretty impressive. Then we went over to the new dorm wing to check out Dan and my geothermal project. It was pretty sweet to see it working. I headed back on the Train around 6PM. I slept most of the way back to Chicago.