Austin 10/20 Race Report

I was so relieved this morning when I woke up, looked outside and saw the moon. Clear skies meant that the rain hadn't arrived yet to ruin the race. I was worried that we would wake up to storms and my running crew would chicken out (and I didn't plan to run alone!).

We all met at the lobby at 7am for a delicious breakfast of bagels with peanut butter and bananas. I consider this the perfect pre-race meal. Once we had sufficiently stuffed ourselves (I was still full from dinner last night, but made sure to eat this morning), we headed over to the start line. The start area was organized into corrals, but there was no corral number on our bibs. The announcer said that the corrals corresponded to our bib numbers, but I couldn't figure out how. However, they removed the corral lines before the starting gun, so I'm not sure what good they did anyway.

Starting line

Lookin' good pre-race

The race started off with a great band--singing the ever popular "Ice Ice Baby" and were wearing funny costumes. They were the best band of the race and we got to run by them twice, though I have no idea what they were singing the second trip by. There were bands about every half mile during the race, so there wasn't much of the course where I couldn't hear music (I ran without headphones). Thank goodness for the bands, because the area that we ran in wasn't very scenic. We were somewhere north of Austin and a somewhat industrial area. The course was quite flat, but we had a pretty strong wind to contend with for a bit of resistance. And it was quite warm, mid 70s, and humid, so the wind was actually welcome!

We all tried to stay together as a group, and I was impressed that the men didn't sprint ahead and leave us ladies in the dust. I, however, managed to lose the group I was running with again. Losing my running buddies about 3/4 of the way through the race seems to be status quo now.

There were a couple of fave moments during the race for me. One of them was at mile 5, when the race volunteers handed out ice cold towels. It was like a little piece of heaven that lasted about 90 seconds. Then it was back to running through soup. My other favorite moment of the race was when we reached our cheering squad after mile 8. My parents and Eddie were there waving signs and cheering us on.

I was so happy to see him!

The finish line was a bit unorganized, but they had plenty of bananas and water for me. We were able to meet up with the rest of the group pretty easily after the race. The medals are great! Easily the biggest and heaviest medal I've received to date. They really make you feel like you accomplished a big feat!

Big winners!
 

Miles logged: 10