My First 10K - The Great Pumpkin Challenge

Today I ran my first 10K. As in - 6.2 miles. I am proud to say that I did it. I ran the entire way!

I race was held in Saratoga and Janis was picking me up at 8 AM. I woke up around 7 and had my usual breakfast of Special K. I pondered what to wear since it was a chilly 38 degrees. Brrr.

We arrived at Saratoga State Park at around 8:40. We thought we had plenty of time. The race didn't start until 9:30. What we didn't plan on was the parking situation. We had to park by the Peerless Pool which was ONE mile from the start line and registration area. Fortunately they had two shuttle buses running back and forth. Unfortunately, the line was very long and we ended up with a crazy bus driver. (That's another story).

We finally made it to the registration area, ran off the bus, grabbed our registration packets, stood in the LONG line for the bathroom and then looked among the 1,300 runners for our friends. There was NO way we were going to find them. It was utter nuttiness. People everywhere. I have to say I thought this was the most disorganized race I had ever run. The finish line was in a weird spot and they even had to push back the start time because of the shuttle/parking situation. There was no signage telling us where the registration area was and everything just felt a little crazy.

We finally made our way over to the start line and by some miracle, we found our friends. Our running gang consisted of me, Janis, Jen F., Amanda, and Suzy. Darlene was supposed to run with us - but we never managed to find her in the crowd. Amanda - who is running a MARATHON next weekend was our pacer. She had the magic garmin. The horn blew and we were off.

We started off running nice and slow. By the time we hit mile 2, I was thinking that running a 5K was easy, peasy. How could I ever have thought the 5K was hard??? If I was running the 5K today, I would only have had one more mile to go. But alas. I was not running a 5K. I was running a 10K and that meant we still had 4 more miles to go. We kept going at our nice pace and hit mile 4.

And that's when it got tough. And mental. Running is 20% physical and 80% mental. It's all about making yourself believe that you can do it. And then actually doing it. Anyway, we kept going and then we hit a hill. It was a long hill. Big and tall and seemed to go on for about 1/2 a mile. It sucked. I didn't like it. Not one bit. We finally reached the top of the hill and then hit mile 5. Almost there. We had a downhill. That was nice. We hit mile 5.5. If I hadn't been with my running friends, I might have stopped. My ankle started hurting. And it was cold. My nose was running and my fingers felt numb. Note to self: must buy running gloves!

We hit the home stretch. Unfortunately, it was another hill. Damn those hills. I made it to the top of the hill and we had .2 to go. That's the part where I felt like I was going to vomit. But I didn't. I kept going. We all crossed the finish line at 1 hour and 12 minutes. (Those results are unofficial. It might actually be a little less).

Anyway - I did it. Ran the whole way. I have 6.2 miles under my belt. Phew. It feels good to be done. I am one proud running momma!