Nurse on the Run

It’s been a whirlwind of a weekend and week of work so far!  Friday after work (that would be after 8am, for those of you confused by the night shift schedule), I hopped on a Bolt Bus to head to DC for the Hot Chocolate 15K, as well as Sara’s wedding shower.  I promptly fell asleep on the bus…only about ten people were on the bus, so I got a seat to myself.  It’s totally normal to be able to curl up on two seats, right?  See, all this running making me small has some perks!  Sadly I only managed about an hour and a half of sleep, but oh well.

I got to DC and Metroed out to meet Karilee (she was in my sorority in college…when I was in a sorority) and soon Sara and her grad school friend Marissa arrived.  We headed to the National Harbor in DC (technically Maryland?) to pick up our race packets.  Seeing as I was running on practically no sleep, I passed out in the car on the way and slept through mad amounts of traffic.  (Foreshadowing…I was never a literary genius, so I’ll just point it out here.)  We got to the expo and grabbed our jackets, which was supposed to be an exciting part of the race.  I have no idea who sized these jackets, as the small was small and luckily I could exchange for a medium.  That doesn’t change the fact that the jacket is more like a piece of plastic than a jacket.  But whatever.

After grabbing our stuff, we headed to Rustico in Old Town for dinner.  Beer is carb-loading, right?  I’ll take it.  Then we headed back to Springfield, VA for the night…I promptly passed out.  Exhaustion at its finest.

race morning

Alarms went off at 4:30am for an 8am race, as we needed to drop a car off in another part of the city before heading to the National Harbor.  The race had warned to get to the race early because of traffic and such, so we made sure to leave plenty of time. 

I’m just going to take a break now to say that this race was a total disaster.  I don’t do a ton of races, but I have been running for fifteen years so I’ve done my fair share.  This goes down as the worst race I’ve ever run, from many standpoints.  Let’s continue on.

We thought we had plenty of time to get to the parking lot and the race, but we hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on the bridge over to the National Harbor.  It was absurd.  Time ticked along and we thought we would be fine, but Karilee was running the 5k, which had a 7:30 start.  Eyeing the clock, we were pretty sure she wasn’t going to make it.  The race officials later said that there was an accident that backed up traffic, but I’m not sure I believe.  As we moved along (sat in traffic for at least 45 minutes?  Maybe more?), we had Karilee hop out so she could walk to the start of the 5k.  Since it was her first race, I felt bad that this was how her experience had to be.  Sara and I later explained that races aren’t normally like this AT ALL.

We finally got to the parking lot (which was like a mile away from the start?  Sorry to those 5kers…) with plenty of time.  We weren’t sure how bag check was going to work so we just left all our stuff in the car except for cell phones.  The logic was that we’d be getting to the starting line with not too much time to spare, so wearing extra layers wasn’t totally necessary.  (LIES.)  We made a stop at the public bathrooms (thank you to the men who stole toilet paper from the mens room since the womens room was out) and made the long walk up to the start.  We made it to the start maybe around 7:30-ish to find out that they were delaying the start of the 5k until 8am and who knows for the 15k.  Okay then.

the waiting game

I hung out with Sara and Marissa for awhile in Corral C before heading up to Corral A to try and find some people who I thought would be up there.  (Elyssa, Bojana!)  Plus, I didn’t know what time they were going start the 15k (and neither did the volunteers…), so I figured I’d head up to the corral just in case.  No one had any idea what time the race was starting!  The 5k finally went off at 8:15am, and the news was that we had to wait for the 5k people to finish in order for the 15k to start, as the courses overlap and they needed to be off the course for when the 15k came through.

Who thought that was a good idea?

Anyway.  It was 30-ish degrees and I had on a long sleeve shirt, tights, and gloves.  It was cold.  We weren’t moving much.  We didn’t really have cell phone service.  No one had any idea when this race was going to start.  Around 8:45, I just wanted to get some chocolate and leave.  I talked to some of the people around me…NYC can get 50,000 people to Staten Island in a reasonable amount of time.  Boston gets 24,000-ish people out to Hopkinton.  This was ridiculous.  The race finally went off a little after 9am.

I will bring up two points here:

1)  I waited at the starting line longer than I was running the race.  Huh?

2)  I woke up 4.5 hours before the race started.  For a 15k?  Ridiculous.

Anyway, let’s talk about the race.

hot chocolate 15k

I’ve never run a 15k before, and I haven’t done any speedwork at all since the NYC marathon.  In fact, 8:00 miles have felt fast lately.  However, when a gun goes off…my legs just go.  So that’s nice. 

Let’s take a peak at the course:

15k.

Elevation profile.

I had barely glanced at the course before the race and only spent a few seconds looking at the elevation profile.  We took off running and immediately had a left turn, which was then shortly followed by a U-turn.  Really??  Who planned this course?  That many turns at the start of a race only causes congestion and a mess.  So that’s fun.  Also, I couldn’t feel my feet for the first mile.  Not exactly how I had planned for this to go.

But whatever.  We continue on and end up on a highway.  A HIGHWAY.  I almost whipped out my phone to take a picture of the scenery.  Because, you know, an out and back on a highway is so pretty.  But really, that’s what it was.  I know we weren’t running through the monuments, but I expected more than an out and back on a highway.

We crossed the mile mark and the clock said I ran a 6:30 mile…or, you know, the first mile was a tenth of a mile short.  Awesome, I thought.  But whatever, I was distracted by how pretty the highway was.  (Or not.)  The race was pretty congested, as we had one lane to run out on and one lane to run back on.  Now, I’m not saying I’m the fastest person in the world, but it was hard to get around people and I ended up running around the cones set out (on a highway) to pass people.  I like to live life on the edge.

We hit a water stop and some volunteer handing out water was yelling, “You won’t catch the guy in front so you might as well slow down and have a drink!”  I don’t know if he was trying to be funny, but I was annoyed.

This part of the race was fairly flat, which was nice.  Somewhere around mile 2.4 we went over a timing mat.  It was apparently meant for the 5k marker, but somehow we ended up on the wrong side of the road.  Oh well.  I was chugging along, working but definitely not working too hard, and my watch said I was running around 6:45 pace.  I have no idea how that felt comfortable…but I’ll take it.

Eventually we were on the “back” part of the “out and back” and it was nothing to write home about.  We headed back up what I’m guessing was some sort of on ramp and did the same U-turn back to the start of the race.  Right around mile 5-ish I saw Christine and it was fun to hear her cheer!  (Hope you come back to NYC soon!)  I grabbed some water at the water stop and moved along.

The last part of the race was just the 5k course, which started down a huuuuuge hill.  As in, I was running 6:30 pace and felt fine.  That’s cool.  We crossed the 10k mat (which I think was probably short) and my watch was at 42:30-ish, which would be a 10k PR.  That’s nice.  Also, I should run more 10ks.  (Or not, because they hurt.)  At the bottom of the hill, we ran past the parking lots and up a hill that wasn’t so fabulous.  This led into a short out and back on a gravel path.

Running downhill is fun!

Finally around mile 8 things got scenic, as we ran through the National Harbor and along a path on the water.  Some people were out, but they weren’t cheering much.  The photographers thought I was funny when I would smile and do jazz hands.

I look like a train wreck when I run.

That’s nice.

Back to the race.  I was still moving along and passing a bunch of people, so I guess I ran a smart race (ha!  Never in my life…) as other people were dying.  Looking at my splits, other people were just dying more than I was in.  In my defense, the last part of the race was hilly.  Take a peak at that elevation chart and you’ll see we finish up a massive hill.

However, we didn’t have too far to go so I moved along.  Crossed the nine mile marker and tried to push up the hill.  It wasn’t too long after I crossed that mile marker than I realized the course had to be short.  The finish was way too soon!  Whatever.  I picked it up once I realized this and crossed the finish line.  That was fun.

There’s a rainbow in my finisher picture.  How fun.

After crossing the line I dry heaved a bit, thought I was going to vomit, then I was fine.  No idea where that came from since I’ve never vomited in relation to running. 

results

9.3 miles in 1:03:31, avg pace of 6:49
Mile splits:  6:30 (actually 7:10 pace), 6:47, 6:45, 6:57, 7:12, 6:44, 7:22 (oops?), 6:53, 7:28

I’m 98% sure the course was short, in which case my overall pace was more like 6:58.  Which is still faster than my current 10k PR, so that’s cool.

As for placing?  Here we go:

Overall:  164/10150  (Top 1.6%)
Women:  36/7678 (Top 0.4%)
Age Group:  10/1857  (Top 0.5%)

Well, I can’t complain about that.

the aftermath

After the race, I met up with this crew:

Elyssa, me, Bojana, Dutch, Juls, and Mary

I chatted with them (mainly about the tragedy that was this race…) while waiting for Sara to finish.  Sara ended up rocking her race in 1:25!  Hooray.  We had lost Marissa, so we waited for her at the finish line before heading up to get some chocolate in hopes of finding her there.  It took about an hour, but we finally had the DJ make an announcement and we found her…hooray.  In the meantime, we had some chocolate.  The hot chocolate was tasted and although the fondue was fun, it seemed a bit limited.

My chocolate platter.

For some reason I thought there would be more.  I could have gone for another banana.  Par for the course at this point, that’s for sure.

As we all said after the race, the race was horrible, I’ve never seen anything so disorganize, the course was miserable…but at least we ran well.  Here’s my race crew:

Me, Karilee, Sara, and Marissa

Then we left.  Luckily traffic wasn’t nearly as bad.

thoughts

I guess I ran well.  Averaging sub-7 pace off of no speed work and minimal sleep isn’t too shabby, and I placed well.  That’s about all the good I can say about this race.

I had high hopes for this race to be really fun because it’s been run in Chicago for years and everyone seems to love it.  (I’ve never run it in Chicago, but it’s a popular one.)  I was excited to run a race with Sara and for Karilee to run her first race.  But this?  Disaster.  I ran a couple races in DC when I was in college (including Marine Corps as my first marathon…), and they’re very well run.  And they’re actually in the city…as in, you run past the monuments  That’s pretty awesome.  This race was run on a highway.  Really?  I’d rather pay NYRR to have me run in Central Park.  The start and finish were about a mile away from parking and the National Harbor.  Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have the start/finish in the National Harbor?  I’m so confused.

I don’t claim to be a race director or urban planner or anything of the sort (but if you need CPR or burn care, let me know), but there was so much wrong with this race.  People from the race sent out an explanation (I’m not so sure I would call it an apology), but I don’t think the explanation was really all that great.  How can you mess up that much?  This is an experienced organization that put this race on.

Needless to say, I’m happy with my time (even though I’m sure it’s wrong), but I won’t be back next year.  It would take a couple years of successful races and a new location in DC for me to return to this race.  But at least I got some chocolate?