The race took place in Charleston, West Virginia which is about an hour and a half from my house. It didn't start until 9am (I think- memory loss. LOL) so technically we could have driven down that morning but we went ahead and stayed in Charleston that night. My mom took Rex for the weekend, my dad had Curly, and my husband's cousin stayed at the house to take care of the pups so the night before we got down there around 5:30 or 6 and headed to the Civic center to pick up our packets.
When we got there Michael Dorsey from season 14 was there speaking. I got a picture but it disappeared from my phone =(
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We then went to the hotel, checked in, and went to get some dinner. I mentioned in the giveaway post that I had changed my diet and went low carb about 8 days before the race. I had done one 5 mile run and a couple short runs between starting the diet and the race and they went TERRIBLY. My energy levels were awful and I would just hit a wall around 2 miles. I couldn't believe how much it effected my running so I knew that this race was not going to be what I wanted it to be.
We got up the morning of the race and since we hadn't brought anything with us for breakfast, we ran through a drive through and got breakfast sandwiches. I ate the meat, egg, and cheese from mine while we were heading toward the race. It was very easy to find parking in a parking garage (it was free! woohoo!) and then we made our way to the race start. The starting line was near a lakefront park with an outdoor pavilion and an actual building with real restrooms! That is always exciting.
We hung around for about 45 minutes and then lined up. The line up was VERY chaotic. The 5k and 10k took off together and they had pacers but they were all in random spots. I stood with the 10:00min/mile pacer and literally 2 people in front of me was the 8:30 10k pacer. Then on top of that, they were doing a wave start but didn't really announce it all that well, so about 5 minutes before start time they raised a rope in front of us but there were hundreds of people behind us that didn't really know about it. It kind of unnerved me because I was afraid they would start without announcing it and we would be trampled. Thankfully just about a minute before start they finally let everyone know about the ropes.
The race starts and our wave goes out and the pacer I was staying with was going a lot faster than I thought she would. I think the first mile was around a 9:33 which is obviously pretty far off from what I was expecting. I managed to run the first half but after that I hit a MAJOR wall! I was out of energy and couldn't run very far at all before I needed to walk. I started grabbing Gatorade at the water stops and hoping to finish in a halfway decent time. I was so very frustrated because 2 weeks before I had flown through my 5 mile run and thought I had a pretty good chance at having a good time and then I went low carb. I know this is a good decision on my part for now but I am definitely planning to add back in fruits and sweet potatoes before I up my mileage again.
My time ended up being 1:10:44. I was so mad at myself and frustrated but I am looking forward to running another for redemption in the near future. The husband however, had a great race at 1:02:43. His best time yet and a 5 minute PR!!
.JPG)
