Saturday afternoon, Holmes and I dropped Riley off at the "pet resort" (HA!) and hopped on 95 up to DC. Met up with Sara, rode in her beautiful new convertible, and headed over to the race expo. (Ugliest race shirt I've gotten so far). As we were coming in the winding long line, we saw a guy with a cookie the size of his head. Then we walked past the booth with stacks upon stacks of head-sized cookies as we were on our way to the bib pick up room. We decided we'd definitely be getting one of those cookies. We grabbed the usual amazing deals (tech tanks for 15 bucks, gu for a buck each, etc) and made our way to the cookies. But, where did the cookies go?!?!?! They were sold out! It was the most disappointing thing to happen to us since we saw the ugly race tshirts ;)
Saturday night we took it easy, Sara hooked us up with some great italian food from a place near her house and we watched the Heels grind out Nova. Then up at five the next morning. Yep, 5 hours sleep before a 10 mile race! EEK! Great coffee and my oatmeal (that I brought from home, I don't play games when it comes to pre race food!) and we hopped in the convertible car, convertible car (hahahah), to catch the metro. 20 min later and a 10 min wait at the station, we were on the train. Easy way to get into to town. Got there with plenty of time to spare, but I had to find a porta-potty! I wish I had taken a picture of the lines, but I got in line at 7:13. It was finally my turn at 7:41. (ps...race starts at 7:40) I wasn't worried though, because the race was seeded and my wave was third or fourth to start. I actually jumped in line just as my wave was moving towards the starting line! I forgot that my garmin goes to sleep after a few minutes if you haven't started it. So, it lost satellite connection and I wasn't able to start the watch at the start line. Oh well, I caught it at the first mile and was able to watch my mile times.
It was perfect weather. 45 or 50 ish degrees. clear as a bell, breezy, just beautiful. A lot of the blossoms were in bloom, but it looked like maybe some of the trees hadn't peaked yet. It was really neat to see the monuments that way. I'm not really a tour kind of person, so this quick and dirty tour was just right for me! It was incredibly crowded. I'm not sure I dig the big races because of that. I like eventually getting some personal space around me... But it was still a really fantastic race. More crowd support than any race I've ever been to. Great course, very very flat. I'm not used to that so it was a nice surprise!
Holmes was running the 5k portion (he just raced a 10k last weekend...what a B**A**!!) He and Sara were able to see me cross the finish line and then it took a while to find them after that. The hunt for water and bananas itself was difficult enough. I was MEGA disappointed with the post race set up. I think I was spoiled by the NC Half last year (bananas and bagels and beer and chips and lasagna and massages). Oh well, went back to find Sara and Holmes. Holmes PR'ed his 5k!! And I PR'ed my race, but the only other 10 miler I've run was a trail race (jumping trees and streams, climbing stream bed walls, etc) BUT, I did a lot better than I expected. I've been running mostly slow miles for the marathon training. I do speed work once a week, which gets some short mileage down to a low 9 min mile and some mile repeats into the mid 8's, but I had also taken a week off of that...so I wasn't sure how I'd do. My chip finish time was 1:37:51 for a 9:48 pace and I felt FANTASTIC. What a great encouragement for the marathon. I recommend to anyone training for a marathon or half marathon to race something before it and get that gauge of how you might be doing!
I got some great pictures of the monuments. Some are crooked, but I was running when I took them, so I dig 'em because they are unique ;) I don't have them saved to Holmes Mac (which I'm on right now) so here's the link to the facebook photo album. Enjoy!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=75055&id=530494435&l=a85860cd71
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