Broad Street Run 2008 (WITH LAUREN!!!)
This morning Laur and I got up ridiculously early to head to Philly to run our very first Broad Street Run, a 10 miler that literally goes from the north end of Philadelphia to the south end. I'd originally thought we needed to leave before 0600, because the website said to park on the south end and take the subway to the start and you should do this before 7. Well we left a little later which wasn't no thang, and got to the parking lot around 7(?). Then we had to wait for porta potties for a while and boarded a subway around 745. At that point there was still a large number of people on the platform waiting for another train to come. We realized we weren't going to make the start on time, but we both had watches and it was chip timed so it wouldn't really matter- this was supposed to be a fun race for us, a chance to take in the sights of Philadelphia and the thousands of fellow runners, plus this was the first time Laur was running since her half, so it wasn't a race to set world records.
We finally crossed the start line around 815-820, and we were off! I can only imagine what it looked like with all the people there waiting to go, I'm actually kind of glad we missed that madhouse, this way we got to the start and we went, no standing for 15 minutes. We took it out a bit fast, running the first 2 miles under 20:00, and I was worried that it would cause problems later. Lauren's knee started hurting around there so we stopped for a bit to stretch out.
The streets were lined with lots of people coming into/out of church, motorists that looked quite annoyed at the prospect of being stuck where they were for a good long while, loud cheering spectators and lots of music. And lots of runners, of course! I think there were 19,000+ of us pounding the pavement this morning. By far, the largest race I've been in, by an astronomalot!
Around mile 2, we could see William Penn atop City Hall, and commented about how very far away it seemed. I think the fogginess of the morning had something to do with that though. The next few miles were kind of tough, with Laur's knees providing varying levels of cooperation and fairly constant pain. We got into a pretty good run/walk pattern that seemed to help that out, at least for short periods of time. Honestly, this girl is the toughest person I know! She would say how badly she was hurting, I could SEE it, but she NEVER quits. It's amazing and inspiring and a bunch of other words that mean the same thing :)
We hit the 5 mile mark right about 1 hour in, and it turned out it was before City Hall- the only time we had to run any other direction but straight ahead, as we did a half circle around city hall. At this point in the race we made some fun discoveries as we started recognizing a number of people who seemed to be running near us the entire time, yo-yo-ing back and forth with us as we ran then walked, and they did the same. There was the cop with the awesome shirt for his police department that said, "You can run, but you'll only go to jail tired!" There was the couple who kept stopping to stretch- the guy looked like he was in some pain. There was the pair of girls with black shirts, one of whom dubbed herself a 'natural born whiner'. And there was the older woman with blondeish hair. I'm sure there were more, that's all I can think of now. Towards the end of the race, we made it our goal to try to finish ahead of them- a goal we succeeded in!
I remember around mile 7 some woman near us yelled something like, "UGH, ONLY MILE 7!?" and Laur agreed with that sentiment. We were already on the part of the course that we had driven the day before, so even if there was some way to go, we knew exactly what was coming, and that has always been a HUGE mental boost for me. I remember, foolishly commenting to Laur at mile 4 that we had less than a 10k to go, to which she responded something to the effec of, "You HAD to pick my least favorite distance!?" OOPS! Then I did the same thing, reminding her at Mile 6 that we had only 4 miles to go, and that, apparently, is her SECOND least favorite distance. EPIC FAIL MANZ.
We formulated an end game plan, wherein we would take Mile 9 relatively easy to push it to home in the last mile. Appropriately enough, as we neared the home stretch there was a water station playing the theme from Rocky I, "Gonna Fly Now". I punched the air and Lauren, appropriately, made fun of my antics. She was in a great deal of pain and even yelled at me during the last mile and I was really worried about her but she pushed through it all and we ran and last mile under 10 minutes and finished with a big negative split! At the finish I stopped and gave her a big hug and kiss (the best way to finish a race!) and told her how incredibly proud I was of her.
Because I am currently in a university study where I can only eat foods pre-prepared for me, I couldn't enjoy any of the finish area goodies except ice cold water. We found a spot on the huge lawn in the Navy yard, in sigh of the massive Navy ships, and I stretched her out. As a result, a photog from the Philadelphia Daily News snapped some pictures of us and now we're famous! Well, not really famous, but if you follow this link to the slide show and click through, we're at the end with me stretching out Laur's left hamstring! How cool is that?!?!
We both agreed as we walked back to the car that this is definitely going to become a tradition of ours, like many other races already have and many more will. It's always a wonderful day when the two of us can share running so completely. So see you next year, Broad Street Run!
Now for a much needed nap!!!
the short of it:
10 miles in 1:58:30
including:
Mile 1- 10:12
Mile 2- 19:50 (9:38 mile)
(2:24 break to stretch out)
Mile 3- 35:49 (13:35 mile)
Mile 4- 48:47 (12:58 mile)
Mile 5- 1:00:50 (12:03 mile)
Mile 6- 1:12:49 (11:59 mile)
Mile 7- 1:24:30 (11:41 mile)
Mile 8- 1:36:45 (12:15 mile)
Mile 9- 1:48:29 (11:44 mile)
Mile 10- 1:58:28 (9:59 mile)
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markrunsfar) wrote,
