What a great day it was in spite of all other stuff that went wrong!
Renee and I, both worked till 11pm the night before. MP peeps shooshed us out as soon as it was possible because they were so excited for us and wanted to help us to get out so we could have more sleep.
I drove to Hershey's Giant by 4.15am, called Renee at 4.20, she was just rolling out of bed. She overslept. She drove like a maniac from Mechanicsburg to Hershey in 25 minutes. By the time we left, we were running 45 minutes behind.
Driving through Palmyra on 322 I realized I saw a car coming my direction but in MY lane. It sure freaked me out because I did not know if I should move to opposite lane or the car would. It did. Phew, what a scare! Not sure why it was in the first place.
I put one of the parking garage addresses they gave us into GPS but it ended up being valet parking. What the heck?
They were nice enough to drive two cars aways from us so we could easily get out. I missed the second parking lot they recommended and I could not back up because there was a car behind me. As soon as we saw the third one, we quickly got in (never mind it was supposed to cost us 26$) and we so rapidly quickly fast rushed to the race.
We could see so many people already running, they must be crazy - race has not even started yet :)
We did not see any booths set up so we just kept going to the end of the crowd (a BIG crowd). We did see information booth and I am not going to get into details to say how long it took us to get our bib and timer and be all set. By the time we were, 7th wave has already left. We found our 21st and here we were!
I did not realize how much alike we look! :)
Could see City Hall in the background
I love spirit of any race! You feel the electricity of excitement, it is so overwhelming! We stood at the start line for about a minute and here off we went!
Start line, here we come!
We are watching wave 20 leave and give us space. A few seconds till start
I was impressed with Renee, who did not train at tll but we could keep the same pace (or may be it was me who did not train enough? :)))) We ran for almost 4 miles with no stopping.
So cool, all the roads were closed so we had a lot of space to look at the architecture of old buildings. I forget how much history Philadelphia has.
Russian flag!
Philadelphia Zoo is on the left
Mile 7 and it is going GREAT!
What a view!
Mile 9, crossing Falls Bridge over Schuylkill river
Cool! I did something that Chuck Norris did not do!
Beautiful view at Philadelphia Museum of Art, where race ended
Last mile. Last year, I remember it started getting hard after mile 9. This time I was running and running and expecting it to be hard. At mile 10 Renee sort of gave up on speed and I went on so I could, hopefully, improve my time from my first half I did last year.
So, when I saw mile 12 mark, I thought it would be a piece of cake because "I am almost there". I had no idea how wrong I was. Last mile was endless. Very, very long and it might not have been so bad if not for the midday hot sun. I do not do very well in heat and this sun was brutal to me after me already being hot from 2 hours previous running.
I remember tingling last year, it started after mile 10. Here I could feel it only when I saw finish line. I was so close to fainting but I pushed through and woop, woop, crossed the finish line.
1 min 50 sec improvement from last one. Now waiting on Renee. She came 14 min later.
What an accomplishment!
I love how thick and heavy the medal is!
What was interesting, that when we started walking back.. we realized that neither of us remembered exactly where we parked. Renee thought it was 16th street, something that started with S. Looking for a while we saw we were not finding it. Our lucky star came out when I saw two policemen. They directed us to the place but when we got there...It was not the parking garage we parked at. We sat on the curb thinking what to do. What were our options? We did not have a phone and even if we did... Who would we call for help?
We sat thinking.. Then Renee showed at another street, that was crossing the one we were at and it looked like it had parking garage. We walked to it and.. it was IT!
No idea HOW MUCH relieved we were. Address was 1500 Locust street. No where close to S 16th. If we did not meet those policemen. We would not have found the place. We would keep walking along 16th street till we dropped. (already ran, walked so much)..
I was surprised how much not tired I was when I got home. I did the dishes, laundry.. I felt soooo accomplished! I loved this race and day. I love life!
