Sprinkler Sprint 5k recap

This past Saturday, Jeff and I met up with some friends for the 2nd annual Sprinkler Sprint 5k. Last year's race was on my birthday in Aug, and we had so much fun running it, that we knew we wanted to do it again in 2014.

We bought another Groupon for the 2 race entries, which meant no shirt this year, so we just wore the ones we got last year. :-)

We biked the 3+ miles to the race start to make the 5k into our own little duathlon. We hadn't ridden our bikes in forever, so we left with plenty of time to take a nice, easy ride. It was a great warm-up!

After locking up our bikes we headed to Container Park to meet up with the rest of our group and wait for the race to begin.

We found a shady spot to wait next to the Vita Coco booth. Yum! Actually, neither of us really cared for the plain coconut water, but we loved the new Mocha flavor. So much I didn't even get a picture of that one.

Our group consisted of me and Jeff, George and his 14yo son, and Jeb and his 6yo son. Quite the group!

Truth be told, we walked pretty much the whole thing. George had a bit of a mishap when he lost his Amphipod clip that had his ID and credit cards. :( He practically did the course twice trying to find it. Luckily, someone found it, and it was waiting for him in the Lost & Found at the end of the race. Yay!

Some of us were prepared with our own water guns.

Even though we were walking the whole course, we were all having a great time! Until the littlest guy fell about halfway through the course. Apparently, he went down pretty hard and hurt his elbow.

Good thing there was some Hawaiian Shaved Ice on the course. It apparently is the perfect cure for a little boy's elbow. Of course, I didn't get a pic of the little boy with his shaved ice cure. But here's one of Jeff.

There were plenty of fun water stations, including a huge yellow fire hydrant. And there was no way you could do this 5k without getting drenched.

Yeah. It was definitely a pretty great way to beat the Vegas heat on a Saturday morning!

The best part of the race, of course, was the perfect-ness of our bib numbers.

Jeff and I are both 36; I was born in '77 and he was born in '78. Couldn't have asked for better bib numbers! LOL!!

Would I do this race again next year? I'm not sure.

Compared to last year, it just wasn't as good. There were a lot of water stations. In fact, I think there might have been more, but they weren't as neat as last year. The water stations were mostly groups with water guns shooting at you as you passed, whereas last year there was a bit more variety.

They still had a slip-n-slide finish, with a super long line, which we skipped, but other than that the finish was pretty lackluster. Not even the small workout towels we got last year.

The start was kind of lame as well. Last year, there were beach balls bouncing around, fueling excitement, as we waited for the start. This year? No beach balls. No real fanfare or excitement to get the race started. They started the folks running with strollers out first, which seemed a little weird, and then suddenly the crowd was moving.

It was still a fun time, but it just wasn't as good the 2nd year. Oh well.

Have you ever run a race a second time that was a bit disappointing compared to the first?
Tweet