Bastille Days and a 5K Recap

Happy Bastille Days!

Bastille Days Street Festival is a yearly event in Milwaukee where a few of the streets shut down, and food tents from local restaurants pop up.  There are also several different tents of retail items (jewelry, clothes, art, etc), as well as live music.

Eiffel Tower Statue in Cathedral Square

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Street festival

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Live music

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Milwaukee kicked off the festival today, and I took advantage of it all day.

First, Staci and I got out of the office and headed over to the festival for lunch.

We both got cheeseburger sliders from the Catch 22 tent and amazing ice cream cones from the Cedar Crest Ice Cream tent.  It was great to get out and walk around the city a bit and also enjoy some good festival eats.

Then tonight, James and I ran in the “Storm the Bastille” 5k.

Our race numbers (we were too sweaty to take a pic)

This is an extremely popular race in the city, and it was definitely the most crowded race either of us had ever run in.  There were at least 5,000 people running and walking, so we spent the entire race sprinting and dodging people along the way.

It was so hard to get a good pace because  of all the people (also, note to anyone planning on organizing a race — start the walkers and runners separately), so I can’t decide if I actually liked the race.  It was fun to be a part of such a big deal race, but I hated how crowded it was and that we were always running around people (good to know for future reference that if we are ever being chased, we are good at zig zagging).

BUT all that sprinting must have been a good thing because we finished in our personal best time of 26:45, so I guess I liked it :)

We are pretty happy with how it went, and it was fun to run at night (I’ve never done a nighttime race before).  Also, it’s always fun to run with James, and I absolutely loved how adorable it was went he would go out of his way to high five all the little kids cheering the runners on (there were actually thousands of people lining the course cheering for everyone).

Also, we both caught the “bug” again, so I think training for our next half will start up soon.

Well, I’m exhausted (and we have one more episode of Breaking Bad to watch tonight), so I’m calling it a night.

Have a great Friday!

Comments

  1. kaceyt says:

    Bastille Day sounds super fun! And great job on your 5K! I live in a small town, so I don’t have any problems w/ crowded races when I run local races and I’ve only been in one big race ever…at the beginning of the race I was so busy zigzagging that I forgot about setting my pace…I was going way too slow:P

  2. What a cool festival!! I didn’t know my dog’s birthday because she was a stray, so I made it July 14th in honor of Bastille Day :-)

  3. Kailey says:

    One of my pet peeves with bigger races is that it is always so hard to get a good pace because of the mass amount of runners. Sounds like you had fun though :)

  4. 5k are hard because everyone wants to go out fast right away despite their level of running. it is hard to find your groove but it looks like you rocked it! way to go!

  5. Congrats on your PR! I hit up the Cedar Crest tent for lunch yesterday and got a scoop of their peanut butter cup…so good!

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