Overall, I think the race went really well for me. Of course, I had some struggles during it, but I think I overcame them to the best of my abilities.
Now, I know one of the main rules Tang set forth is to never race with new shoes that aren't broken in properly, but I figured since my other shoes would give me major blisters anyway, I took my chances running the 10 miles in my never-worn-before shoes. Mistake? Maybe.
Like Knapp said, traffic was horrible that day, and it took him and Kevin an hour and a half to get to my house. I got a call from Erica around 5:30 asking where I was. It took Erica about an hour to drive 15 minutes to the race, and I only live a couple miles away from her house, so I thought we were definitely going to miss the start of the race! We finally left my house around 5:35 and drove to the Stop and Shop plaza, getting there around quarter to 6, so we had to do a half mile - mile "warm up jog" to get to the starting line. Fortunately, we got there with about 5 minutes to spare to get our numbers and a quick bathroom break. Of course, we had to line up at the very back of the line, behind about 3,000 other runners. So when the gun went off, it took us about 2 minutes to actually reach the start of the course.
I really enjoyed the first third of the race. Everyone on the sidelines were clapping, shouting, even giving me high fives! I really felt like a celebrity, it was awesome! When I hit the 1 mile mark, I finished it in about 13 minutes, which is around the pace I wanted to be. Ideally, I would have liked a 12 minute pace, but with the lack of training, it was hard for me to go all 10 miles without burning out. At the 3 mile mark, a lot of us had to run single file because of all the cars that wanted to pass by. It was actually really annoying because I was inhaling car exhaust for about a mile and a half. Not really optimal conditions.
When I hit the 3.5 mile mark, some crazy guy with a hose was spraying the runners to maybe 'cool them off' since you know, it was a whopping 70 degrees out. It didn't matter anyways because not long after it started to drizzle, and then DOWNPOUR!!! When I was running close to the beach is when it really started coming down at about 4 miles in. I don't know about everyone else, but I absolutely loved it! Aside from the fact that it probably slowed me down some and my headphones kept popping out of my ears, I thought it was so much fun!
The downpour only lasted about 10 minutes, then cleared up. I was still trucking along until about 5.5 miles in when I was experiencing excruciating shooting pain on the balls of my feet. I attribute this to the fact that I didn't break in my shoes before the run, and was paying dearly for it. I thought if I could just ignore the pain, it would go away after a little while, but the pain persisted and I was forced to walk for about 10-15 seconds until the pain subsided and I could start up again.
I finally reached mile 6 about 1:15 in and I was really feeling great, thinking I could power out the last 4 miles. I lasted about 1 mile before the pain started up again. By this point, I was at a really strange stretch in the course. It was a road that was surrounded by huge trees and green overgrowths. It really seemed like someone had paved a road in the middle of a forest! It was pretty, but also spooky because there weren't any streetlights and was very dimly lit. Made me glad I was running with a bunch of other people, cos I would be so scared running that road all by myself.
This is when I met the barefoot runner. Yes. You read that correctly. Some old guy ran the 10 miles BAREFOOT! The only other person crazy enough to do this is Kevin, but even I don't think he's that crazy!
It was also at that time that the shooting pains in my feet had started again, and at the end of that road, I had to walk for 10-15 seconds more. I started to get annoyed at myself. I started back up and went solid for the next two miles, with another downpour occurring between those miles. There were these two runners that kept running for a short distance, then walking for a couple of minutes. So, it turned out that they would pass me, then I would pass them, then they would pass me, so on and so forth. I don't know why, but this really pissed me off for some reason. Probably because of the fact that I wasn't stopping at all and they would still get ahead of me, and then they had the pleasure of walking for a couple of minutes. It was really getting on my nerves, but eventually they stopped and just walked altogether. Thank god!
I had 1.5 miles to go when I had to stop again because of the pain. But I started back up quickly and told myself I wasn't going to stop anymore no matter what. It was the third time I started running again that I really began to feel the tiredness in my legs and thought that if I had to stop again, I probably wouldn't be able to start back up. 10 miles is really really long. And to be running for 2 hours? Thats a job and a half!
With half a mile to go, I could see all the runners that had finished before me, walking back to their cars or wherever. A lot of them looked so tired, but a few kept cheering us on talking about all the water, grapes, and oranges there were at the end of the race. That was enough for me to motor it to the finish line!
With my chip time, I finished at 2:04:08, which put me at a 12:18 minute pace, which I am so happy about! Thats really close to the goal I wanted. I saw Kevin and Knapp on the sidelines, but instead of finding them after the race, I went directly for the water. I had time to drink about half of a bottle and shove a handful of grapes in my mouth before we took the 2 mile trek back to the car. That was probably the worst part of all. My body was shutting down, but I had to keep on going to get back to the car. I had really high spirits, but everything else, physically, was awful! We finally made it back, and I literally had to crawl up the stairs in my house to get to the shower. Thats how much it hurt. Every little movement resulted in pain for the rest of the night. But it was SO worth it.
The one thing I wish they had were clear mile markers in the race. This has also happened in the other 5ks I've run in. I always had to ask somebody where the hell I was or how far I'd gone. Otherwise I would have been clueless!
In any case, I'm really proud of myself for running the 10 miles. I had some serious reservations about doing it because I ran like 2 times in the past month. Now I feel like I can run the half-marathon no problem! I'm really looking forward to putting that 13.1 decal on my car when I finish. I'm such a nerd. :)
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