My First 10K

Ooh boy! I've have lots to share with you and will try to play catch up this week :o)

But must talk about my 1st 10K!!!

I did the Cooper River Bridge Run (CRBR) on Saturday, March 27th and it was a good trip!

Charleston is such a beautiful place (luv it) and is a short enough trip to feel like a getaway. We arrived at our hotel

And let me just say I got a lot of R&R this weekend :)

After check-in we headed out later on that evening to the heart of the city for a pre-race dinner

The food was delicious!! And the broccoli cornbread was something new to me!

Some of the ladies from my running group PRBC was able to join us to load up on carbs!

Let me just preface my running report right now to say...I was TIRED the entire week!! I had been running around, staying up late, etc. the week before leading up to that weekend = not good!!

I did take a 2 hour nap on the way down (thank goodness I was a rider this time!) and after dinner I pretty much was knocked out (around 11:00ish) in my comfy hotel bed until 4:00AM the next morning!!!

The race started at 8:00AM however we opted to take the 5:00AM shuttle bus over concerned about traffic and would hate to come all that way to miss the race!

We waited 2.5 hours (felt like an eternity) in the WIND (13mph!!) and cold before the start time!!

We was C.O.L.D. and huddled up in a corner to avoid the wind! GO PRBC! :)

I did my usual prep for race by warming up on the treadmill...with no luck (if you know what I'm saying haha). I ate a granola bar about 1 hour before the race and downed some Sport Beans 15 minutes before start time (that was a very good decision!). And got in the very very long PortaJohn line about 30 minutes before and handled my biz! YAY! :) *whew anxiety over*

The sun finally started coming up and we were anxious to get the race started!

It was really inspiring to see these runners compete...I "know" I can do it now!

I will say I was not as nervous about the bridge as I initially was once we drove over it to get to the start line. It's basically one big highway!

And the folks dressed up in various costumes were hilarious along the way and made it so much fun! :)We had heard a rumor that there were Krispy Kreme donuts around mile marker 4 or 5 and we couldn't wait to get to them (even though we thought we would hurl if we ate one Haha). No dice..oh well!

The crowd was thick and you never felt like you were running alone. I really enjoyed the energy and large crowd more than I thought I would!

Took our time approaching the slow climb to the bridge and took lots of picsEven texted and facebooked while running Haha!We wished it was sunny out and clear (came later on that afternoon go figure)The gigantic presence of the bridge was overwhelming and just GREAT!!!! (excuse the iPhone pic my digi came died by then ;op)

Other than the 4% incline of the Ravenel Bridge (that I speedwalked up the entire way!) the race course is relatively flat. Which made for a pleasant 1st time 10K and would recommend this race to first timers!

I will say around mile 4.5ish/5.0 I was losing steam BUT ran into a fellow frat who I ended up chatting it up with until about 5.5 marker which was a great distraction, and after that I just pushed it out. Those darn jelly beans were fab! Haha :)

My overall time was 1:11:28 and I was very happy with that result! Especially with it being my 1st 10K and only second race ever!! Plus I was really not pushing it too much and had fun snapping pics/texting, doing 13:2 intervals and such.

There were 7 of us in our group (see above of huddle/freezin pic - my fav) and all of our 1st time doing the CRBR race!!

We did an awesome job ladies!!!!