Bellin Run

While I'm recording my travels and adventures this year, I'll write about what I do on my limited days off. We don't get many breaks in PA school. So when you do, you have to take advantage of them. On other rotations, I may be expected to take call so I may not even have weekends off. It makes it hard to plan my schedule in advance no doubt.
This weekend, I went to Green Bay to visit my family. I haven't seen them much this year because of school. We had a good excuse to come see them this weekend, because it was also the 36th annual Bellin Run. It's a 10k road race that I first did 11 years ago. It's a lot of fun because it's a community event. All throughout the 6.2 mile course, people play music and have sprinklers, squirt guns, and hoses running to keep things cool and fun. Something like 18000+ people registered for the race making it the largest in the state and one of the top 5 biggest 10ks in the USA. It was a hot one with temperatures at the starting line already 76*F with highs predicted to be nearly 90*F for the day. I don't always like big road races, but this one is definitely one to do. I had good company to do it with; my parents and cousins ran - they ended up in the paper and even on the evening news! They're fast and famous --finishing in the top portion of their age groups. As for me, I was fighting a cold, so that slowed me down a bit. Plus I didn't want to push it much in the heat having seen what heatstroke looks like last year - it's not pretty. For a relatively shorter race distance, they still had people collapsing and needing to be pulled off the course for medical attention. Even so finishing in the top 1500 out of 18000 people isn't anything to sneeze at. 
I must be crazy if I think a day off should include running a road race, but I enjoy it. Signing up for races like this one, keeps me running and active. On the days when I don't want to get my butt off the couch, it gives me motivation to get out of the door. Obviously it's good for my health and well-being as a stress reducing activity too. Plus, it's something my family enjoys so it makes for another way to spend time together. As I mentioned, we've been doing this sort of thing for years. What do you think I should do next weekend?