Mark and I took more than an hour to drive out to Fairfax to pick up our race goodies...we were really excited about the sweatshirt that was promised to all pre-registrants! Bonus! What was NOT bonus was the traffic on the way out....Arg....
But we got there and were pretty giddy to pick up our numbers!
Snoodles came with us too---a fun outing for all!
After getting our number, sweatshirt, and a bit of shopping perusal, we decided to see what other things the new development held. We discovered a Panera and thought that a mid afternoon coffee sounded great!
We had a good time with our coffee, our snack, and each other! :)
Well, the final race of the year finally arrived. I have to admit that as we drove out to the race, I was more than a little sad. I had a really good time this year with my Resolution and it was exciting to see it come to fruition...and equally sad to see it end. But I was looking forward to running and looking forward to a new run... :)
We arrived a LOT faster than we did yesterday---Mark and I had budgeted to give tons of cushion in case there was traffic. We were glad we didn't need the cushion but that meant we arrived with more than an hour to spare. On a bright note we didn't have to look for parking at all...super easy! :)
We decided to go toward the store and see how we could spend an hour. We were really delightfully surprised to see the nice staging area they had for the race. The cleanest bathrooms of the entire racing year--indoor CLEAN ones! Wooohoo! (And on a side note, the porta potties outside at the start line were clean too and NO LINE!--Was this race for real?!)
They had a huge area inside, complete with chairs and couches for early arrivers to wait inside--so nice! We were able to stay warm and if we had wanted it we could have sipped hot cocoa! Classy!
And as Mark and I were standing there taking it all in, one of my former students walked by! How cool is that?! I was so excited to see him and it was great to catch up! FUN!
Before we knew it we were headed to the start line. It was a balmy 50 degrees out. The race was well attended but not too crowded.
We had a great time on the run! What surprised us the most was how dark it was on some parts of the course!
The campus was well lit but the neighborhood to and from the campus was pretty dark--as I said to Mark, if I had known how dark it was going to be I'm not sure I would have waived liability! Mark said he understood why some were wearing head lamps!
By the way--cool free schwag! Little blinky lights that attached magnetically and flashed yellow and blue! You can see it attached to my number here on my bib! Fun!
It was a great time and a good run!Our splits were as follows:
Mile 1 8:07.89
Mile 2 7:40.78
Mile 3 8:23.32
Mile 4 7:51.89
306 29/231 1213 Amy Trenkle 35 F Washington DC 32:20.27 32:04.06 8:02
304 80/184 536 Mark Hannum 34 M Washington DC 32:20.39 32:03.60 8:01
So, what's next? Stay tuned for my Year In Review post tomorrow....the Special Superlative Post...as well as an reveal of my NEW New Year's Resolutions! Happy New Year! Thank you 2010 for a wonderful year of memories!