Next up in the blogging sequence should be the American Odyssey Relay. Honestly I don’t even know where to start with this one. I actually feel the need to sit with pen and paper and outline what I am going to cover before I even start. Yeah, I think that is what I will do. More to come soon…

This race was a last minute decision to add to my race schedule. The proceeds benefit a school where a friend of mine’s child attends, so I thought why not? It ended up being a great decision.

The races started with a series of children’s races. There was a distance for every age, shape and size. It was great to watch child after child cross finish line after finish line. Heck, they even had a mile for you to take your dog with you. How awesome is that?

We lined up at the start line and off we went. There were not a lot of us, but there was enough runners that you could always see where you were going. The volunteer support was great and they had someone at pretty much every turn to make sure you didn’t miss one. There were two live bands on the course that seemed to be alumni of the school (translates they were high school aged and younger) but they did a really good job and it was fun to see them as you rounded the corners.

We crossed the finish line and were greated with plenty of refreshments. The t-shirt was really cute to boot. I was pleasantly surprised with this race and would do it again in a heart beat.

Wow…April 1st? Really? It has been that long? Wow!

What a crazy almost 2 months it has been. New projects are starting up at work which means lots of time closing out old projects and moving to the new. The rewards in the end will be worth it, but oh how I have missed my blog.

First things first! I need to write a race report for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler. I should start from the beginning which would be the day the race registration opened. This is a VERY popular race, so if you want to run it you need to be online the minute the registration opens and you need to try and try again till you get in. I got lucky as they opened the registration a few minutes early and I was able to get in without much trouble. Friends of mine tried for two hours before they got in. The race itself sold out in only a few hours. Luckily all of my friends that had decided to register were able to get in, but it took some effort.

For being a 10 miler I was impressed with the race expo. Dad and I piled into the car an hour before the expo opened and drove down to National Museum Building in downtown DC. There was a good bit of traffic as the Cherry Blossom festival was in full swing, but we did eventually find someplace to park that was only a few blocks away from the expo. Luckily I have a good sense of direction (which comes in handy often, but that is for another race report) and navigated us to the expo without trouble.

When we arrived at the expo we got in a line that took us to where I picked up my packet. I thought the expo was crowded, but it was nothing compared to what was to come. I got my number, D-tag and bag without trouble. Then it was time to shop while I waited for the rest of the DisneyRunning.com crew to get there. I went through the official race merchandise and saw a polo shirt I loved. I asked if they had it in my size but was told it was only left in a Medium. What?!? The expo had only been opened for 40 minutes and stuff was already selling out. I settled for a stainless steal water bottle wrapped in a fauz leather sleeve with the race logo stamped on it. Off we went to look at other stuff. I ended up picking up a spi belt, balaclava, and a thin winter hat. I then went to the Disney Endurance Series table to try to pry some new information out of them, but alas they had nothing new to offer. I met up with Margaret, Erica, and Kelly before grabbing a danish with Dad and heading home. I needed to make a fruit salad for our evening festivities.

That evening Erica hosted a carb load meal for the DisneyRunning.com folks that were running the race. Lasagna, garlic bread, salad, chocolate cake, fruit salad…oh my! It was delicious and even more delicious was the time spent with good friends. I headed home early since it was an hour drive home and needed to drive back down in the morning.

We took the metro to the race. I figured this would be good practice for the Marine Corps Marathon. One of the groups we were travelling with was a large family…8 kids large. This slowed us down getting started towards the race start, which was causing me some anxiety. I am one of those “first” to the start line kind of people. Not that I want to get close, but I want to have plenty of time to relax beforehand. When we did arrive to the race start the port-a-potty lines were 50 people long and the start was only 20 minutes away. This was the start of a bad thing…

Margaret and I train together so we set out to run the race together. She is a saint for listening to me complain about having to pee for so long. I thought I had found my chance when we got to about the 3 miles mark, but the line was so long we actually saw the sag wagon catching up with us. When it got too close for comfort we took off without going. The next 3 miles were spent trying to create enough mileage between us and the sag wagon that we could make another attempt. At about the 4 miles mark we realized that Margaret had dropped her cell phone. She went back looking for it while I carried on but I was able to dig my phone out of my new spi belt and call hers and it helped her find it in the sea of Gatorade cups that littered the streets. Finally we came upon a set of port-a-potties with no line and I hopped right in. I heard Margaret call that the sag wagon was coming so I jumped out so fast I almost didn’t have my skirt all the way up and we took off.

The rest of the race we ran our butts off. Margaret left me with about a 2 miles to go because of a skirt malfunction but I carried on. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t have made it that far and I wasn’t going to let her down by giving up then. I crossed the finish line and saw her a few yards after it waiting for me. We started walking in search of first aid, water, bananas, anything!?! Luckily Sean had already found the water and came towards us carrying two bottles.

Unfortunately the many unpleasant experiences of this race overshadowed what a great race it could have been. Between the severe lack of port-a-potties, the tricky stepping past the water stops for us back-of-the-packers, and the distance between the finish line and aid I didn’t get to enjoy just how beautiful this course was and the historic areas that we passed.

When I crossed the finish line I told myself “NEVER AGAIN”, but I think I might take that back and give the course another try now that I know what to expect. There were a lot of nice people and the course was gorgeous with the flowers and landmarks. Next time I will pee at the Metro station.