Today I ran my first race ever, the Run for the Roses in Raleigh, NC. It was great! I am very happy with the result: 26:46, a lot faster than I expected. The adrenaline and the people around made me run faster than usual.

The race started at 2.00 pm so I left home around 12.15 pm. It's a 40 minutes drive to downtown Raleigh, and I was well on time to pick up my Championchip, which is tied to your shoe and enables electronic measuring of the results. The next 20 minutes I sat down, drank some water and enjoyed watching the preparations. I did a 10 minute warm-up, and at 1.50 pm we all lined up in a big group. I'm not sure how many participants there were, but I'd guess at least a 150.

It was very windy but sunny. I'm very glad that I ran the route earlier this week because it made it a lot easier to time my effort. The big difference was of course that now the roads were blocked off. I knew that in the last mile of the race there are two roads after each other uphill, and I was ready for them. On the 1-mile and 2-mile markers there were volunteers yelling out the split times.

A part of the proceeds of the Race for the Roses goes to Urban Ministries. The race was very well organized: lots of volunteers, a good course, lots of parking spots nearby the start and there was a even a water break half-way. For a 5k run I don't need water but it was a nice touch. Every female participant received a rose at the finish. After the race there was free food and drinks. Throughout the event there was nice and friendly atmosphere.

Now, up to the next race!

Tomorrow I'll run my first ever race, the Run for the Roses in Raleigh.

I've been running for a while now, and hope to run a longer race later this year. I want to get some experience with a real race before I do that so I signed up for tomorrow's 5k race.

I just came back from Inside-Out, a runner's store in Cary, where I picked up my race number. The run starts at 2.00 pm tomorrow in downtown Raleigh.

Don't expect any great results since I'm not very fast -- my goal is to run at least within 34 minutes (11 minutes a mile). I'm really looking forward to it... look out for number 28!

We had pizza tonight from the dough I prepared last Sunday. I placed the dough in the fridge and now, 4 days later, it still worked.

The pizza wasn't anything fancy: just olives with the left over Fontina cheese and a bit of mozzarella. It came out nicely -- I used fresh olives instead of canned ones and it makes a big difference. I underestimated the time it takes to make the pizza so we had dinner pretty late.

For the regular reader it no surprise if I say that I like cooking. Like father, like son: Jaap is experimenting with making camembert cheese. A very interesting experiment -- good luck!