Picture perfect Cherry Blossoms!Well, I guess the heel is a officially rehabbed because I survived the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler today without incident. Woohoo!! And I can now say I've run Cherry Blossom--that's a bragging right around these parts--which is good because I don't think I'll do it again. Don't get me wrong, the trees were beautiful, they really were, and D.C. showed off all its wonderful D.C.-ness (monuments, White Houses, and whatnot), but I didn't dig running with that many other people. I don't know the official count, but I heard there were about 14,000 runners. That's a lot of bodies in motion! Seriously, I feel like I spent the entire course weaving in and out of folks. Not to mention that they ran out of shirts and goodie bags at the expo. What's that all about?!? Granted, that's partially my fault for showing up fifteen minutes before they shut the thing down, but still, they knew how many people were registered, right? Did someone forget to carry the one when completing the purchase order? No big deal though, the shirt, as they say, is in the mail. And the weather was AMAZING. (Okay, it was little too warm for my liking, but I'm trying to keep it positive, ya know? It was certainly better than the freezing rain I heard someone talking about at last year's race.)
A sea of runners. I'm in there somehwere. Where's Waldo???I ran with my friend and we finished in 1:26--a pace of 8:37/mile. My Garmin actually calculated an even 8:30/mile, but I'm not going to quibble over a few seconds when my running has been significantly limited in the past month. Like those who feel "lucky just to be nominated", I felt lucky just to be able to race today. And my favorite part of the race? The guy holding a giant stuffed Puss in Boots (ala Shrek) and screaming "RUN! Puss wants you to RUN!!" It's the little things.
Hi! I like runners!
The happy finisher.
1 comment:
Luckily, it's the time that counts and not the pace, right? Excellent job for just getting over an injury!
I also thought that for as long as the race has been around the expo wouldn't have been as much of a cluster as it was, but what can you do.
As for the mass of runners, I thought that for as crowded as it was, and for how those crowds never really thinned out, it was much easier to get to and maintain my pace at the Cherry Blossom than at the National half, where there were half as many people and it took me three miles to settle into my pace.
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