Luckily, for me, my sissy moved to DC last year so I had a place to stay for free and I got to hang out with sissy and her hubby all weekend. We did fun stuff like attend Truckerboo to eat all kinds of tasty food (Takorean might be the best invention in the history of food), visit the Air and Space museum to see the shuttle (turns out that they have the faux space shuttle, no wonder the heat shield looked fake!), shopped for some darn cute (and warm) clothes.
I got a fancy new iPhone with Siri a few weeks ago. Like a good packer, I asked Siri about the weather in DC as I was trying to pick out my outfit for the big race. It said that it would be in the 60's so I packed 3 outfits with varying weights of clothing so I could choose the day of. Then that stupid crappy Halloween snow storm hit (which knocked out power to my house, but I wasn't here for it!) and the forecast for race day dropped from 60 to 30...
So we went to outlet mall and I went crazy at Old Navy, Adidas, and Nike buying cold weather running clothes. Ok, so maybe I bought a few short sleeve shirts too...
This one was only $5!!
Runners Have the Best Buns, love it!
I also bought matching shirts for my mom and I to wear in an upcoming half marathon, cheesy, I know, but it's something we do and they were only $6 each at the Nike outlet! I picked up some super cheap compression running tights from Old Navy and a fleece shirt, hat, and gloves that I wouldn't feel guilty throwing away (ok, so maybe I did feel guilty about ditching clothes on the side of the road and ended up carrying everything to the finish line with me). I also found this crazy half top thing at Adidas....
I went with the thought that it was meant to be a sports bra with sleeves so I treated it as such on race day. I will say that it is a darn tight sports bra! I got a size bigger than I normally get and barely had enough room for the ladies (TMI?). I did end up loving this thing. I like having sleeves for running but I don't have a flat belly so full length tops tend to roll up when I run so this was the perfect solution! I wish I had gotten 2 since they were on the sale rack! The day of the race I ended up wearing all new clothing except my socks and shoes...it all worked out pretty well.
Now for the actual race recap. The race started in the middle of DC and ended in Virginia so the organizers suggested taking public transportation to avoid parking issues. My sister lives close to a Metro stop so this all worked out well for us. We gave ourselves an extra 45 minutes to get to the race so we'd have time to check our bags and get lined up. I was nervous about standing in the cold but I was equally nervous about not getting there on time. We were about 5 minutes out the door (my fault) and had issues buying Metro passes but we made it on the Metro with time to spare. Some poor marathon runner got on at the same time as us and was totally lost (and late), we tried to point her in the right direction, I hope she made it. Then we hit a delay. I started to get nervous. Sissy and hubby were only really running the race for my moral support and didn't care so much about their time so they offered to check my bag for me so I wouldn't be late for the gun. We jumped off the Metro and got up to the start line (about 10 feet from the Metro entrance) literally 2 minutes before the gun went off. Sissy and hubby took care of my stuff and got in line at the back while I weaseled my way into the middle of the pack. The timing couldn't have been better but my nerves had almost gotten the best of me!
The race was actually pretty nice. The course wasn't too bad, we ran past the Pentagon and the 9/11 memorial, which was pretty cool. It did have one major drawback....
I never really understood these signs. I guess because every time I've ever been on an icy bridge the rest of the road was already icy. This was not the case on race day! The only warning I got was watching runners in front of me inexplicably collapse in the middle of the road when they hit icy patches! There were several overpasses during the race. After learning my lesson on the first overpass (my tailbone still hurts), I was forced to slow down to avoid another injury. One poor lady was even lying in the middle of the road motionless on the first overpass (at least she got medical attention from some pretty attractive Marines!). Other than that my only issue with the race was the temperature. I have cold weather induced asthma and stupidly left my inhaler at home thinking I wouldn't need it for the race so the rest of the time was a struggle to keep running and not give into the temptation to walk. Oh and the last 0.2 miles is this ridiculously steep hill. I'm not really sure what they are trying to prove but knowing that I will never sign up for the real Marine Corps Marathon (same finish line)!! It ended up being my slowest 10k ever which I attribute to the slow overpasses and asthma issues. It was still a super fun weekend and I'm equipped with a whole new set of cold weather running clothes!
Now, I need to stay motivated for the Space Coast Half Marathon in 3 weeks!!
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