I am so sore right now. Since my sophomore year of high school, I’ve run maybe 12 miles in total. However, that total lack of training and running experience didn’t give me any pause when the opportunity came to sign up for the Foam Run 5K. How bad could 5 km be?
5 km can be very bad. The first kilometer started off well. Pinarski and I ran through the fun yellow foam at the beginning of the course and around the lake at the Mitchell Park Conservatory. Everyone seemed like they were having a good time, smiling, laughing and giving off a general joyous attitude.
The second kilometer is when the pain started to kick in. It started getting a little bit harder to breathe. Pinarski started to run further ahead of me. I was scared.
The third kilometer is what I like to call the walking kilometer, because I walked the entirety of the third kilometer and even considered walking off of the course. People started passing me on the course. All of the foam had evaporated off of my body. I was sad.
The fourth kilometer was pretty boring. The course led us to a bunch of hills that were in a straight line, and there wasn’t much to look at. This would have been a good place to put more foam on the course. But the beginning and end of the course were the only foam-filled spots.
The fifth kilometer was delightful. I found a family to run with, they adopted me as one of their own and we ran at a leisurely pace to the finish line. In the distance, the mountains of foam were a welcoming sight. We ran through the foamy goodness, and it had never felt so good to be able to just stand in place.
As for the things besides the 5K, they were a mixed bag. There wasn’t much to do before or after aside from stretch, which I probably should have done. The music choice beforehand was the usual mix of poppy-upbeat-pump-up songs, but after a while, all of those sorts of songs start to blend together.
My main gripe with the foam run is the major lack of foam. I expected to be running through gallons of foam looking like I had just gotten out of a soap factory. If someone looked at the course and didn’t see either end, they wouldn’t know that it was a foam run. Most people were there for the foam, and Marquette should have gone all out and sent everyone home foamy and happy.
All my complaints about the run are inconsequential. Even with my intense soreness, the 5K was a really fun time.
The proceeds of the 5K all go to Midnight Run, a volunteer organization at Marquette that helps the needy and the homeless in the community around Marquette, and that information is much more important than a lack of bubbles.
