I did it!

As you can see Tessa brought her game face! And I was psyched too, totally pumped, I had butterflies and terrible race jitters for days preceding the race and it all came to a head yesterday morning.

Here's the (boring) play by play: Got up at 5:15 got everyone ready to go and left to the bus station just before 6:00. Boarded a bus (they have special shuttles that go straight to the start line) that left at 6:20. Traffic was pretty bad and we didn't arrive until 7:40 our start wave was supposed to leave at 7:49 and there were about 10,000 people and 2 blocks between us and the start line! I made a bad choice and drank a bottle of water on the bus and needed to use the facilities (which were nasty port-a-potties with a line a mile long to use) so I opted for holding it... another bad choice. We said goodbye to our supportive husbands and jogged up to the line (well as close as we could get) but still missed our wave... no big deal we have our own timing chips so it was ok, the gun shot in the air and we were off! I felt awesome that first mile, we were in a slow start wave so we just shot past people like crazy my adrenaline was pumping and let it carry me, I did a 7:27 the first mile. After having past so many people (literally 1,000's) I thought we'd be kind of out in front soon but there seemed to be an endless flow. That was probably the most difficult part of the race was having to wait for people and look for holes to pass because it was seriously packed! Not a good race for the claustrophobic. On the other hand it made me feel SO FAST to be passing so many and not being passed by anyone, I only got passed by maybe 3 people the whole race. The problem with that was that I felt like I was going faster than I actually was and I slowed down every mile to the end. But there's another reason for that... so remember how I mentioned about drinking too much water on the bus? Well the need to go started hitting me hard as I descended a hill in mile 3 there were some port-a-potties but I didn't think it was worth it to stop seeing as I aaaa.... well.... ummmm... had already "leaked" a bit. I won't disgust you any further but I'll just say that it was bad and definitely made me hold back the rest of the race not wanting to run too fast and loose it all. Gross I know. But I figure probably only like 3 people are going to read this HUGE paragraph anyway and they probably really love me and won't disown me for wetting my pants. Anyway, I continued on at a slower pace to the finish line not feeling very fatigued and feeling very embarrassed. My time was 52:17 (8:27 mile pace). Not thrilled about it but pleased considering I only trained for 2 months. I'll do better next year for sure! We ran together a bit but all finished on our own.

Let me explain a few of the pictures: in the big one it's Angi, me, Susan, Emily, and Jill. We're all friends who know each other from church. The crooked one on the side is on the way home when everyone feel asleep, my face is supposed to say, "who's the one who just ran a race?!?" Sophie was cranky when I finished (hence the kiss picture) but was all smiles when we got her a popsicle. Oh and Tessa's game face is caused by her new teeth coming in, she pulls some funny ones!

All in all it was a good race and I'm so glad I did it. And I definitely plan on doing it next year! Here are some fun facts about the BolderBoulder 10k:

• it's the 2nd biggest race in the US
• 5th biggest in the world
• over 50,000 runners and 150,000 spectators (at least)
• it's at 5,300 feet making it an altitude challenge as well
• it's 31 years running

Oh and I think it's funny to hear my places since they are so ridiculous in a big race like this: I was 6,722th overall; 1,618th (out of 26,182) women; and 66th out of 728 in my division. If my math's right, that puts me in the top 9% of my division... that sounds better. :)

Who's going to do it with me next year?