Azalea Festival Big Buddy 10K

My first 10K race is done!! All those weeks of following a training plan have come to an end (at least for now). It was a great race too. We left on Friday for Wilmington which is about 3 hours away. I didn't pre- register for the race since I wasn't sure if we would be able to go until we were on the road. We drove straight to the store that had packet pick up and registration available once we arrived. Michael decided to do the 5K race since his leg was feeling better. This was also the first time we could see the course map since there wasn't one online.

The course was basically through a shopping center (a very nice one) and I thought that was kind of strange. It was a 3 mile loop which you run twice for the 10K distance. I knew the race wasn't going to be "at the beach" but I didn't think it would be in a shopping center. Anyways we got registered, seventy bucks later, and no t-shirt (they were all gone, boo!). We stopped at the grocery store before going to the beach condo for some pre-race breakfast goodies (banana, whole wheat bagel, peanut butter, and coffee k-cups for Michael). Once we got settled in at the condo, we walked to a local Italian restaurant for some dinner. We browsed through a few stores then went back to the condo to watch some TV. 8am race start meant a boring Friday night.

Around 2am I woke up and started to have doubts about the race. I must be crazy to drive all this way for a race in a shopping center! We are at the beach and going to bed at 10pm on a Friday night only to get up at 6am and drive 30 miles to a shopping center to run in the cold weather nonetheless. This didn't sound like much fun and I figured Michael was probably not happy with me even though he didn't say anything like that.

Well too late for doubts now! We are here and just spent 70 bucks to run in this thing, so yeah, we will be running. We made it to the race site and it was quite chilly. We reluctantly got out of the nice warm car (my new car has dual heated seats, score!) to pin on our race bibs. I went to get my ipod out of the bag and oh no, I have earbuds but no shuffle. It fell out when I was packing the race bag back at the condo. Great. 6.2 miles with no music.

It was a small race with about 90 finishers for the 10K and 150 for the 5K. I decided to wear my "Breathless Babes" running team shirt. The back says "Does this shirt make my butt look FAST?" That's the slogan I choose even though I am obviously not fast. But I haven't worn it in a race yet because I thought it would put pressure on me to live up to the shirt. I know, I'm over thinking it. It's just a shirt. Anyways for this race I didn't care since we were out of town and I didn't know any of these runners.

We started the race and it only took about 1 minute for some guy to run past me and say "yeah, you look fast". I just rolled my eyes. I wasn't sure if he was trying to be nice or a jerk. I took it as being a jerk. I wish I had my ipod. But later on a lady came up behind me and said "I love your shirt". I told her I wish I was fast and this was my first 10K. She was nice and said I was doing great. Later one of the course monitors yelled out to me "yeah that shirt makes your butt look fast!". 

Near the halfway point I saw Michael and asked how he did. 2nd place overall! Talk about fast. And that's on a hurt leg. The course was great since it was almost completely flat. Wow. I want to do every race at the coast now. My finish time was 1:02. I was very happy with my time. I didn't have any time goals going into the race. My goals were to finish and run the entire time. Which I did both!

After the race we headed back to the condo and hit up the drive-thru at Hardee's for biscuits and gravy (OMG I have not had that since we were here last summer). So good and bad at the same time. We went back out after showering and walked around some more stores. I realized the beach is kind of boring if it's not hot/summertime. Since our legs were tired from racing we didn't want to walk anymore so we headed to a bar for some drinks.

All and all it was a good race and although short, a nice beach trip. Michael wants to come back next year for the race and of course go for first place. Well the next race on the schedule is the second race in the series Race the Bar. I decided to just do the 5K instead of the 8K. I'm going to do some speed work training because I really want to finish a 5K in under 30 minutes! The race is about a month away and maybe that's not enough time to go for a PR, but I have to start speed training sometime!

Sidenote: The guy that won 1st place got $100 cash! Michael got a $50 credit to a gym in Wilmington. Dang.