First race of the season! In Novemeber when I signed up for a 10-miler on March 6th, the month of March sounded glorious. Ah, spring. Birds shall chirp; flowers shall blossom; all things shall be sunny and bright.
Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt (that's me scratching the record to a halt)
Well regardless of whether birds chirped or flowers blossomed, it was time for my first race of the season, and my first ever 10-miler.
It was a pretty small race. Only 630 runners. In fact, it was so small, my bib number was 9.
I have to be honest. At 6pm the night before, sitting around a little Italian restaurant's table, Michele and I had a serious conversation involving a potential bottle of wine and not setting an alarm for the next morning. And at 6am when that alarm went off, I had a serious conversation with myself about staying in bed and watching Marley & Me. A few rooms away, Michele was having the same heart-to-heart with herself.
Thanks to a few irresponsible, inconsiderate unreasonably loud party-goers just outside our hotel window from 1:30 - 5 a.m., I didn't get very much sleep.
All the cards felt stacked against me. Even 15 minutes before the race started, I put one more ballot in the voting box in favor of forgetting the whole thing and finding a breakfast buffet.
But because Michele didn't let me do that, we ran the race.
I thought I might feel better once I started running, and thank goodness that was true. Off we went! We pushed it pretty hard for the first few miles. We did just under 10-minute miles for the first three, which is very fast for me considering the distance we were going to run. After the first hour is where it gets a bit hairy for me. I have to stop more & push myself harder mentally.
Trevor and John found us in three places along the course. It was awesome to see them on the sidelines as we ran/hobbled by.
So let's play high point-low point.
High point: Michele and I went the wrong way. Twice. I've never gone the wrong way in a race. We were pretty far separated from the pack in front of us and the pack behind us. So much so that we couldn't see where the folks in front of us had gone! So we turned when we weren't supposed to... then we didn't turn where we were supposed to.
Low point: Near the end I was feeling pretty good for 9.5 miles in, and I had a nice rhythm going. However that's when we got lost. The girl who pointed us in the right direction said the finish was "right around the corner there." Well there were *several* corners around which to turn before the finish. I was getting pretty discouraged and worried that I'd *never* find the finish line. But I did. Turns out.
And then we all had an awesome post-race breakfast at Maria's Place on Jefferson Ave.
The end.
Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 6:57AM 