What could be better than a weekend at Cedar Point? A weekend at Cedar Point that includes running a 5k and cheering on friends at a half marathon, that’s what! This was my third year running the Cedar Point 5k, but my first year getting the weekend pass with the race. I went with a group of friends from my running group this year as a change of pace as well, and I knew I was in for a really fun weekend!
Friday it seemed like nothing was going right between personal stuff going on and work. My friend Jenny and I got on the road a little later than we had planned, and I realized when it was all too late that I had forgotten my Garmin watch. Once Jenny and I got on the road, things got better – we rocked out to some great music in her car and we stopped at Chik-Fil-A, my first time ever being to a real one. (There was a wannabe Chik-Fil-A in the food court at Oakland University.) It definitely lives up to the hype! We all arrived in Sandusky around the same time and headed to packet pickup. Once we grabbed our stuff, we headed to the park and made our way towards our favorite coasters – Raptor, Millennium Force, and Top Thrill Dragster. It was our friend Marty’s first time ever at Cedar Point and I was excited for him to share my first coaster – Raptor! After we rode those three, we heard from our friends that were making it a little later and left to meet them for dinner at Chet & Matt’s – my favorite pizza place in Sandusky.
Saturday morning came quickly and it was time to race! I really wasn’t expecting to get a PR, I just wanted to have fun. Plus I was going to be taking a lot of pictures for the Michigan Runner’s scavenger hunt challenge, so I didn’t expect to be speedy. I started off the race running intervals with my friend Jenny. We ran 1 minute and walked 1 minute, and man, is she fast! Eventually I couldn’t keep up with the intervals anymore and decided to just run the rest at a slower pace. There were times I wanted to stop but I told myself I wasn’t going to die and to keep pushing forward. I ended up keeping a very consistent pace for the whole race, even after switching from intervals. I did my first mile in 10:31, second in 10:28 and third in 10:29. My official finish time was 32:59 – not an overall PR, but definitely a PR for the race!
After the race we got to spend the day in the park, and as usual… it was busy and it was HOT! Some of our group got fast passes, so Jenny and I spent the day together waiting in long lines. We ended up riding Rougarou, Maverick, Gatekeeper, Power Tower and Valravn. We ended the night with dinner at Texas Roadhouse.
For our last day at Cedar Point, we got up early to surprise Marty at the half marathon. We had played it off the night before like we planned on sleeping in and he had no idea we would be there. When he saw us, his smile was so big and he got a little choked up! He ended up pulling off an amazing half marathon and getting 3rd in his age group after quite the rocky morning. We grabbed breakfast after the half and then headed back to the park for our last day. It was much less crowded on Sunday and we were able to ride so many more rides. In fact I ended up with a PR – I rode every single roller coaster in the park over the course of our 3 day weekend, something I have never done before! I almost thought it wasn’t going to happen because the last coaster on our list was Blue Streak and when we got in line for it, it shut down. Luckily Jenny and I decided to shop around at the park before leaving, and right as we were headed out we saw that it was back up and running! So I rode it by myself to get my roller coaster PR!
Overall it was an amazing weekend. We want to do this race again next year with an even bigger group from Michigan Runners… except OF COURSE there are some other races we have been wanting to try that fall on the same weekend. We will see what happens!
RD on the Run 