Cherry Blossom 10 Miler ...

I'm going to be honest with you. This is going to be a long post. But since I like you all so much and don't want to torture you with the details, I will get to the point right at the beginning. (Although, if you really loved me, you'd read the whole thing - I'm just saying).

The Short Story - We drove to D.C. We went to the expo. We hung out. We raced. I finished in 1:30:40 (my Garmin read 10.13 miles). We cleaned up. Ate. And went home.

The Much Better And Much Longer Story - On Saturday afternoon, my Run Like A Mother teammates and I loaded up our gear and hit the road in Rachel's mini-van a.k.a "the Mini." Yes, we were a group of hot mamas traveling for a girl's weekend in a navy blue mom mobile. Super stylish!

The laughs started pretty much from mile one. We joked about air farts (yes, air farts), husbands, our kids and roundabouts (obviously, we were rather scattered in our conversation). Once we arrived at the hotel, we attempted to check in and finalize our dinner plans. The hotel told us it would be 10 minutes before we could get into our rooms. After 10 minutes, 45 additional minutes had been added to our wait time. So, we left our luggage at the desk and headed to the expo. I called Kayte to see where she was at (stuck in traffic) and told her to meet us back at the hotel.

The expo was a bomb. Here's the race shirt. Not the best.

The race website had made a huge deal about only "bag checking" items in their clear race bags, but when Alyssa and I went to get our shirts they were out of bags. So, we asked other volunteers with bags if we could have one. And they were not giving them up. I was seriously ticked. Apparently, those bags were "preloaded" and we couldn't have them. So, where the heck was my preloaded bag?

Once we got back to the hotel, I found Katye waiting in the lobby and I ran up and gave her a big hug. I was psyched to spend the weekend with her, since we only got to hang out for like 15 minutes before Disney. Once we got settled, we headed out for dinner. Which was a huge fiasco. At one point or another we had six reservations, but as we walked out the door, we had none. We walked around and finally found a place to eat. It was kind of a creepy restaurant. An all male staff. And we were the ONLY people in there. But the food was good and other people eventually filled the restaurant. We filled our bellies and took this adorable group shot.

After dinner, it was back to the hotel to relax and head to bed. We watched Anchorman. The girls made fun of my hoodie (which I wear so that my face doesn't hit the hotel pillow - a little quirk of mine). And we just kind of chilled.

At 6 a.m. the alarm went off. We slowly got moving and dressed for the race. Here's the entire group right before we headed to the corrals. I know, we're cute.

Katye and I lost the rest of the girls at that point. They tried to hit up the port-o-potties and we headed to the start, which looked like this.

Somehow, we got in to the corral and waited to start. This is us waiting.

Very slowly, we got moving. Katye and I stuck together for the first few miles, but being the competitive person I am, I was running my own race and we got separated. The course was crazy congested and I never felt like I could just run. I kept running into the back of people and had to try to squeeze through or slow down and move over. My pace was all over the place. It was crazy. I felt really good until the last two miles. Until that point I had been averaging about an 8:47 pace. But then I bonked. My last two miles were 10:00 and 9:57. Boo! I know the whole thing was mental. I kept telling myself, "This is all in your head. Suck it up." But I just couldn't. When I finished my Garmin read, 10.13 miles in 1:30:36. My chip time was 1:30:40. BUT - according to my garmin, I hit 10 miles under 1:30. Here's the screen capture.

Sweet! And do you know what half marathon time that calculates out to? 1:59:03. Yeah. Sub-2 hour half, here I come ...

Despite the last two miles, I was super psyched with my time and the majority of my race. Plus, I got to meet up briefly with MissZippy post race. She killed this 10 miler with a time of 1:13. A new PR for her! Here's the picture we snapped.

After the race, we headed back to the hotel (which was a big complicated mess). Katye had to leave (but I get to race with her again on May 8th!) and the rest of us went to brunch before driving back. I can't even start to tell you how much fun this weekend was. So, who's in for the next race?