Broad Street Run

This morning, I was one of 30,000 people to run the Broad Street Run. However, I can state with certainty that I was the only one to run this 10-mile race with a key attached to my shoelace, and 2 subway tokens and a tampon nestled in my sports bra. One of the tokens was lost somewhere along the route. Throughout the race, I splashed water at my face at every water stop and ran through sprinklers to keep cool from the rising heat and humidity. For the first 7 miles, I felt as if I was running and dodging people just to get to the start of the race. Before I knew it, the race was more than half-over, and I was averaging something like 9.5 minutes/mile. Then, around mile 7, I knew I was slowing down because I started running with the crowd, rather than steadily passing up my neighboring runners.

It was around this time that I had to pull up my Reserves-- a pile of tricks that help to keep me running even though all I want to do is lie down on the pavement or jump in a pool. First, technical advice like "keep your knees up, Angie" or "lean forward, let gravity do the work". Then around mile 9, I had to dig into my Special Reserves: "You're Sydney Bristow, chasing after yet another nemesis! Don't lose him!" "You're at the end of ballet class, and the last thing you want to do is another set of royales, but he says to do it again! Just keep jumping!" And etcetera. Any strange or embarrassing fantasy to keep me going.

Finally, I saw the finish line. The sight of it was enough to push me past whatever I was feeling and just pound it. However, 5 steps before the finish line, an annoying lady got in front of me and was not sprinting so victoriously to the finish. "Get outta my way!" I thought to myself. Unfortunately, she failed to read my thoughts and continued to toddle on across the finish line. Hence, my finish was not as victorious as I had wanted it to be, but overall, it was not a bad race! I'm glad I did it.

Best sign from the crowd said "Run fast Carl! Beat Steve!"on one side, and "Run fast Steve! Beat Carl!" on the flip side.

Race Results: 96.5 minutes and seriously stiff knees. Ouch.