The Bay to Bay 12K, on Sunday, March 16, in St. Petersburg, goes down 1st Ave N., from Boca Ciega Bay to Tampa Bay. I wore a green shirt in honor of St. Patrick's Day being on Monday (even though I'm not Irish--see previous post. lol)
Well, I've got another race under my belt. That makes, what--like, a couple hundred ;) Another tanked PR effort, but I pretty much knew right away that a PR wasn't in the cards.
Sunday was warm and humid and overcast. I got up early and headed out the door at 5:30 AM (yes, 5:30 AM. On a Sunday. sigh...) and started the long drive to St. Pete. I really can't wait until I finish school and can move closer to civilization. It takes at *least* 45 minutes to get anywhere from here. I'm sure everyone is pretty much sick of hearing me bitch about that. Anyway, I got to Linae's house at a little after 6:30. Molly and Debbie were there, and I got my packet from Molly, who was kind enough to pick it up for me. Linae was still feeling kind of sick, so she opted out of the race. Debbie was our Official Race Chauffeur, so Molly and I piled into her car and she drove us to the start.
We were really early, so we picked up our chip and went and hung out by the start line. Molly entertained me with some stories, and we chatted with a very enthusiastic young lady from Sebring. We heard a couple of women wearing jackets griping about how cold it was (uhh, lady--it was 70 degrees. Suck it up.) I was feeling pretty ambivalent about this race. I could run. I could walk. I could just go to Denny's. Whatever. I just didn't really feel like running that morning. Molly said she felt the same. But we were already there and dressed, so we figured we may as well just run it. There was brunch and champagne waiting for us back at Linae's. So we started, feeling pretty good as we had been feeling the wonderful breeze off the Intercoastal. After about a minute, the oppressive humidity bore down upon us. We hung on to 5 run/1 walk intervals for a few miles, and then it kind of went to hell. Thank God for Molly, because I would have been walking a LOT more than I was if she hadn't been there to pull me through.
I hope I wasn't too annoying to her. I was quite chatty that morning, telling her some of my race stories, my family stories, my dating (disaster) stories. Basically, I barely shut up the entire 7.46 miles. She didn't hit me with anything, and she didn't tell me to stifle, so I'm assuming she was okay with it.
There seems to be a trend in races with a false finish line. There is a chip mat and a photographer, but the finish is waaaaaay down the road. This is a cruel practice and it must be stopped. We had decided to run all the way to the finish when we turned onto the street leading up to the Pier (the finish line.) It's a deceptively long way to the Pier from the beginning of the road. Like, a half mile. Diabolical bastards. We ran for the benefit of the photographer, but both of our tanks were empty. But with about a quarter of a mile to go, we started trotting. Molly finished a few seconds ahead of me, and we were both glad to have that over and done with.
At the beginning of the day, Molly had hoped to finish in 1:45. I had hoped for 1:30. We compromised and finished in 1:37 and change :)
Debbie picked us up and we headed back to Linae's for our post-race brunch. There was a delicious breakfast casserole with egg beaters, turkey sausage, and hash browns, yummy coconut bread, pineapple (which I don't eat--luau incident in the third grade. But it smelled good,) OJ, and champagne. And I made brownies. From scratch. I'm very proud of that fact. lol After visiting for a bit, I made my way alllllllll the way back to Hudson.
Another notch in my race belt, and I got to hang out with good friends. So it was a good day.
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