Since I started running, I’ve always wanted to run the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler. I love running races in D.C., and I especially like the 10-mile distance.

Back in the fall, some friends and I signed up for the lottery together as a team. We’d heard it was easier to get in that way, so we decided it worth a try…and we got in!

I’ve been a total fair-weather runner through this crappy winter, so I really haven’t run much. I definitely hadn’t run double digits since the marathon, so I had no idea what would happen today.

Yesterday, we took the Bolt Bus down and were starving upon getting off so immediately went to the Dubliner for lunch, since it was across from Union Station and I had many fond memories there. (Side note: I tried to bring my friends to Cap City Brewing Company, and it had CLOSED. I was sad.) I tried to eat as plainly as possible in anticipation of the race, having a chicken sandwich and a beer.

We went over to the expo at the National Building Museum, across from my old apartment, to pick up our bibs, and then I headed back to the hotel to charge my literal and figurative batteries.

After a bit, I headed out to see a former boss turned friend of mine and her precious daughter. Morgan is brilliant, and I learned a lot from her at a young age about both working hard and giving back. She always inspired me by example to work harder and be a better person.

I then hopped on the metro to go meet my friend Amy at Station 4 on the Southwest Waterfront. Amy was there for me when I had a slight meltdown on my 25th birthday, and I will forever be indebted to her for that. She’s working on building a corporate yoga program, which sounds amazing. At dinner, my stomach was already feeling kind of upset, so I had risotto, which seemed to be the most simple item on the menu. HA!

Totally winning photography awards for this one.

I slipped back to the hotel and into bed, to wake up around 6 for the race. I’m documenting everything I had in the 24 hours before the race in case looking back on this at another time helps me. (Foreshadowing!) I had a banana and a banana bread-flavored Larabar and hoped for the best with my stomach, which was still upset.

We walked down to the start on the mall. Those snazzy arm warmers? I totally forgot any kind of long sleeve action, and it was in the low 40s at the start, so I picked those babies up at the expo yesterday. They chafed me…but they looked good?

I was in the red corral, which was one of the first few, but we were walking up as the corrals were moving up, so I somehow ended back a corral. Whatever, I didn’t have any huge ambitions.

Except to not die, and maybe see a few cherry blossoms.

My 10-miler PR is from the Army-Ten Miler in 2012, and I remembered it being around 1:29 and the week before Marine Corps, so I hoped I’d be able to get pretty close, if not PR. (Just looked it up: 1:29:44, just under 9:00 miles.)

I thought I’d try to stay around 8:50-8:55 miles to be able to PR. I mean, I ran an entire marathon in 9:02 miles a few months ago and a half in 8:24 miles last year. For the first 3.5 miles, I did just that. But then, just as I came up on the mile 4 marker and the water stop, I needed a bathroom. Like immediately. So I got in the long bathroom line, and then had to spend a few minutes in the Port-a-Potty myself. I had no idea how much time I’d lost at this point, and decided to ignore my watch from here on out. I’d obviously lost a lot of time, and didn’t want to beat myself up about it since I couldn’t do anything about it.

I focused on just enjoying the weather and the crowds – and trying not to miss running with Tina and Anne too much.

The course was a little different than the Army Ten-Miler and the DC Half. It starts on the Mall – goes over the Memorial Bridge and back (like every other DC race), goes up Rock Creek Parkway a bit under the Kennedy Center (yay!), back down by the Tidal Basin and (booooooo) Hains Point, coming back to finish pretty close to the start. Hains Point is long and boring to me and reminds me of a rough patch during Marine Corps BUT I was happy to run into Kim and Allison here and have friends to finish the rest of the race with.

We chatted and enjoyed the end of the race, and I finished in 1:45:22. My PR for a half, so, you know, 3 miles more, is 1:50:22. That bathroom break added a ton of time to my race. Sure, it would have been fun to PR, but I wasn’t trying to and am not focusing on that this year after driving myself hard for PRs all of last year. I didn’t even look up my results until this afternoon, because I didn’t care/want to know. But bathroom break aside, I had a great weekend a fun long run in the nation’s capital. But I do need to work some on the fueling, because I never want to have to stop for a bathroom during a race again.

YAY NYC in DC!

Did you race this weekend? What’s your favorite race distance?

Yesterday was an EPIC day of running.

I’m so happy to have been having a great running streak to balance out my awful summer of running. All summer, I hoped this would be the case, and it is. WOOT!

Run 10 Feed 10

The first race I ran yesterday was the Run 10 Feed 10. (I didn’t blog about it earlier last week in my upcoming races post because it was a super last-minute decision.)

For every registration, 10 meals were donated to people in need in that runner’s community. They’re running races in Chicago and San Francisco and doing untimed “fun runs” in Boston, L.A., Miami and Seattle–and you can also do a virtual 10K. I was given a free media bib, but I will also be making a donation, and you can do so here, too.

I was also planning on running the 5th Ave Mile later yesterday and running 11-12 miles in between, so I was really nervous about how this would all go down, to be honest.

But, it was a gorgeous day for running, even though it started awfully early. The race started at 7, and I got there around 6:45. It started at the Intrepid, went down the West Side Highway for 3.1 miles and turned around, coming back up the bike path.

And found my buddy Gia. (Photo via her Instagram.)

We’d both discussed that we weren’t racing it, but she’s way faster than me so I still thought she’d go ahead of me and I’d just hang out around 9:00ish miles for 6.2.

Well, we started running together…and then kept running together, chatting away. The pace never felt easy per se, but it never felt difficult either. When we hit the turnaround at 3.1, I realized my time was around 25:00. My “first” 5K (the first 5K I ran the whole thing), which also ran down the West Side Highway (anyone else remember the Sloan-Kettering Rock & Run on the River??), I finished in 35:39. I was ecstatic when I realized how much faster I was finishing a 5K in a race I wasn’t even “racing.”

Uh, or so I thought. I kept telling Gia I thought we needed to slow down a bit, but we didn’t much. We hit 6 miles around 49ish, and I knew I had a PR in me. Wha?? I told Gia this, and she said “ok, let’s pick it up then!” Um, done.

We crossed the finish line at 51:07, which was more than a minute off of my previous 10K PR!

+ 11 miles

But I still had 11-12 miles to go. I was having an internal debate with myself – since I was already breaking up my long run, should I just do all 12 at once instead of doing 11 and then pausing again and doing 1 more? I figured for one mile either way, it wouldn’t matter and that I’d see how my legs felt.

NOT GOOD is how my legs felt. My master plan upon finishing the race was to run 7 up the West Side Highway, 5 back down and walk across around 79th.

Those first few miles sucked beyond all belief, as you might guess. SoulCycle shares some of their playlists on Spotify, and I rocked out to 90s rock (and felt old) for the first 5-6 miles until my phone’s battery got dangerously low.

It just so happened that 7 miles happened to be the Little Red Lighthouse! I stopped here and stretched my sore, sore calves for a minute…and wondered how I’d race a mile. I turned around and hobbled 4 more miles down to about 104th and started walking – and ran into Beth, Steph, Kim and Ali. I was so happy to see them!

I started walking east to 5th Ave. In my run-dumbness, I totally confused Central Park West with 5th Ave and ended up taking a cab across the park to make it to my heat in time, cursing my own stupidity the entire way.

I made it to the real 5th Ave., and it was time to run a mile! I met back up with Gia, and we also ran into Ali! It was the second time this weekend I’d seen her, and it was awesome to see her feeling better.

+ 5th Ave. Mile

Thanks to Erica for getting this shot of me and for making pretty necklaces. No thanks to Erica for leaving NYC. That makes me sad.

Gia and I lined up for the media heat, and it was TINY. There was a total of 23 people! I have never run a small race, and my high school track days were severely limited, so I wasn’t prepared for the pressure I’d feel running with so few people and so many people watching! I just hoped I wouldn’t be last.

The gun went off, and everyone TOOK OFF! I started off fast, thinking I could do anything for a mile. You know, after I’d already run 17. LOL. My legs gave me a quick wakeup call, and I concentrated on running “strong” and not looking at my Garmin. I hit the 1/4 mark and thought “3/4 MORE? SERIOUSLY?” I remembered reading that there was a hill that crested at the 1/2 mile marker, and I decided to back off a tiny bit until I crested that hill. I tried really hard not to look at the street signs either, focusing just on running as fast as I could. I hit the 1/2 mile and gave it all I had.

I did sneak a peek at the 1/2 mile and was around 3:30ish. I wanted to finish sub-7, so I knew I really had to pick it up. (I was really pleasantly surprised at this point that I was pacing for sub-7!) I cruised past the 3/4 mile marker and started seeing the finish line and the 200m, etc. signs. IT WAS ON.

I crossed the finish line, tried to wait a second to pause my Garmin…and it was over? Already?

My official results aren’t up yet because Gia and I had some bib confusion, but my Garmin said:

6:49!!!

I really want to do this race next year…and not run 17 miles first.

Yesterday, I ran two races and 11 miles in between. I PR-ed twice in one day.

Yesterday was pretty awesome.

Have you ever run more than one race in one day? Have you ever run a mile race?? I did not realize how FUN/painful short races can be!