Jungle Jog 5K

This is a local 5K that benefits the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester. This is the first of a 3 year race series to celebrate the new tropical building opening in the zoo and for these years they are offering a medal along with their great and always zany, bright and animal themed tech shirts (last year I did it virtually). You could sign up for the race alone or race with shirt or shirt and medal. I think this is great to allow people to pay less if they don’t want swag and it is less wasteful so people who would just toss the medal don’t get one. I obviously signed up for the medal. They had packet picket up offered at the zoo Friday or a running store Saturday. I picked it up at the running store. One small criticism is the medal was in the race packet. It is fun to get the medals at the end and I wish they gave them out after the race but since you could sign up for a medal or for no medal I understand why they did this so no one would accidentally get a medal who didn’t pay for one. Parking is at the zoo in Seneca Park. The start line is about 1/2 mile away from the parking. They did offer a ride on the zoo tram but I used it as a warm up walk. Another minor critique is it would have been helpful to have directions where to go to the start. The park is a lollipop loop and you wanted to turn left at the intersection and I asked a volunteer in the parking area who told me to go left and I went the right way but I saw a lot of people go right and end up walking a longer loop to the start. Race was chipped timed at the start and finish. One thing I loved is they had signs for runners up front, then runners with strollers, then walkers and then walkers with children. This was perfect. It wasn’t too overly strict with corrals to make the start stressful but allowed things to be spaced. I wish all races like this that tend to attract people who don’t race often would do this as a lot of walkers simply don’t know they are supposed to be at the back for safety. I lined up near the end of the runners. I realized yesterday that after taking a month off from running I am not conditioned enough to run a 5K without stopping so I set run walk intervals for this race. This worked great. The course is medium difficulty with most of the uphill in the first half and more downhill the second half. There is one hill near the beginning. You first do an out and back in the park but around mile 2 instead of heading back you go through the zoo. The park scenery is nice enough but the zoo is so much fun. I had a really good view of the polar bears, sea lions and wolves. We also passed the tiger exhibit but the tiger was hidden. I didn’t see any lions as we didn’t pass their exhibit but I heard them roar. I did stop for a couple pics but I really wanted to be faster than yesterday so I didn’t stop too much. I felt really good the last mile and was glad I did the intervals and was able to run the last half mile of the race without a walking break. I was happy with my time. It was not fast but I was 2 minutes faster than Saturday even though the course was harder, I stopped to take a pic of the polar bear and my legs were more tired. At the finish there were ice pops and in a lodge there were more substantial snacks like fruit and granola bar. Overall this was a really fun race and a great way to support they zoo. I would definitely recommend it.