We did it — 10 miles in 90 minutes, our goal!!!!!!!!! Army Ten Miler: 0. Anne and Ashley: 2. 🙂 Our official time on the website was actually 1:30:01 — exactly a 9 minute mile pace!
Backtracking to this morning, we were up and ready to go by 6 a.m. Yick! I didn’t sleep very well, either. Whenever I know I have to get up early for something big that I don’t want to miss, I get really anxious about it and wake up like every 5 seconds, checking the clock. So annoying! Does anyone else have trouble sleeping the night before an important event?
Here we are, ready to head to the race! We inadvertently had a team outfit on, hehe. We both ended up wearing reddish shorts and our shirts from last weekend’s 10k! Great minds think alike 😉
We got to the race (after a VERY crowded metro ride) in plenty of time and got in our corral (apparently we are cattle). There were 30,000 people running the race — I think it’s the biggest 10 miler in the country! Pretty insane. They had us organized in two waves — we were in the second wave, but at the very front, so that was nice.
At 8 a.m. the gun went off for the first wave, and then at 8:10 a.m. it was our turn! Unfortunately it was crazy crowded the ENTIRE time, and a bunch of people from the pace group behind ours had sneakily gone in before us, so we spent the entire race dodging and passing people. At least it kept us occupied!
It was a beautiful, cool fall morning and all our training really paid off. We were able to keep up a good, steady pace the entire time, alternating between about 8:30 and 9:15 minute miles. They had water/Gatorade breaks at miles 2, 4, 6, and 8, and we (quickly) walked through each of them — I had water at miles 2 and 8 and Gatorade in between. I never drink Gatorade but was pleasantly surprised with the energy it gave me during the race! Tasty, too 🙂
The course was really nice, mostly flat, and took us all around downtown D.C., through the monuments, etc. Very pretty!
I started getting a little tired and my knee started hurting more around mile 6, but the Gatorade kept me going, and my knee calmed down, too. The only time I was really struggling was the last mile. There was some slight uphill for a good amount of it and we were really trying to keep pace to make our goal time! But when we (finally) saw the finish line, we started sprinting and finished strong 🙂 I nearly bowled over a lady who had stopped dead at the finish line. Why do people do that!?
I was really excited to have both a new distance and time PR, since I had never run ten miles before! We had one training run that was 10 miles, but we had to walk the last mile because that was when my knee got really angry for the first time. 🙁
As you saw above, we got awesome finisher Army coins when we were done. Here’s the other side:
It meant a lot to me to be able to run this race because I’m an Army brat! We had a lot of family friends out there running today. They played the national anthem at the start of the race, and I was so happy to be running in a race that honors our brave servicemen. We saw a lot of injured veterans out running, and it was really, really impressive. I lived on military posts most of my life, and we moved every year or two. I think I’ve moved about 15 different times in my life, including after college moves. Crazy!
Here’s Ashley, my brother, and me, proudly showing off our coins after the race! My brother finished in 1:09:49 — so FAST!
What a great day 🙂 Congrats as well to my friends Lara, Sarah, Megan, and anyone else I know who ran the race but didn’t see!
Enjoy the rest of your weekends! I am SO HAPPY my knee let me do this without any problems!!! Now it’s time to rest, rest, rest.
Did any of you run in a race this weekend, too?
