Running around the Streets of Green Bay in the Dark

When I saw that the Nitelite in Green Bay was on Friday, August 5th, I confirmed with the hubby what game he had and signed up. This gave me a chance to do a 5K in August and based on how my August was shaping up, it was my only chance. Holly and Tanya signed up too. Yea! I had a running buddy.

I knew that the Tall Ships Festival was in Green Bay that weekend but I didn’t realize that the ships were on the Fox River and not the Bay of Green Bay. Then Trump decided to hold a rally at the KI Convention Center -- 2 blocks from the start of the race. I expected it to be crazy downtown but it really wasn’t that bad.

We got down there around 6 and the race wasn’t until 8:15. After I found Holly, we walked over to the Ray Nitchke bridge and saw the Tall Ships. With the angel of the sun, some of the ships were really dark when we took pictures of them. They were really neat to see. If it wasn’t $12 to get into the Festival, I would probably have actually checked out the festival since we had time to kill.

After checking out the tall ships, we picked up our packets. The shirts this year were better than last year. They are dusty Badger Red with blue writing which beats the blues and greens I’ve gotten at almost every other race. We got 2 glow necklaces and bracelets. Jayden got one too. He was a very happy boy.

Bob wanted to check out the statues at the Packer Heritage Trail Plaza. We took some pictures and learned about Packer History. I thought the guy in the Fedora was Vince Lombardi. Bob informed me it was George Whitney Calhoun the guy who founded the Packers. It was the hat that made me think Vince.

Holly and I went back to her car to drop off her stuff while Jayden and Bob had pizza. Then we sat around the steps across from the children’s museum waiting for the race to start.

The race was more than a 5K I swear. It took me 45 minutes to do it and my phone said I ran 3.43 miles even with stopping it after the finish line there is no way I stopped at more than .3 of a mile later. The race had to be about 3.25 miles at least. It just never seemed to end. I did beat me time from last year. The worst part was the water station was after mile 2 so I was dying by the time we got there. Even running past the Trump rally wasn’t bad. Jayden ended up with many more necklaces as I picked them up along the route.

I’ll probably do this one again since Holly likes night runs. I’m not crazy about them but it’s something do and usually an inexpensive race if you register early. Hopefully next year there won’t be as much going on downtown though.