Race Report: Zooma Annapolis 10K

So I’m a couple weeks behind in my race reports, but a few weeks ago, I ran the Zooma Annapolis 10K.  The Zooma races started in Annapolis, and this was the 5th anniversary.  No anniversary celebrating, unfortunately.

A friend did packet pickup for us, and well, it didn’t sound so organized.  Rather than assign bib numbers prior to pickup, you show up and get your bib assigned there.  One fun thing is that it means you and your friends can have sequential numbers.  But it does tend to take more time.

Race morning, we arrived at the start.  Ample parking – hooray!  The race also featured a half marathon, and the two races started together.  I will say, there were a lot of fun skirts being worn.  I love that running skirts are popular!  So comfy and cute.

Katie, Jen, and I ran together, and met up with Monica at the start.  She was running the half, so planned to pace a big slower than us.  Additionally, Katie was thinking she might want to try for a new PR, so we were setting off on a solid pace.  After all my races over the past few weeks, I wasn’t sure if my body could keep up, but I was willing to give it a shot.

The race itself was nice.  Pretty course.  Annapolis is a pretty town though, so it’s hard to have a bad race course there.  Our friend Jon was working medical for the race and someone let him drive the cart.  We had too much fun picking on him when we saw him.  “Who let you drive?”  We hit the turnaround and saw Monica, who had decided to also turnaround at the 10K point and not do the half.   The weather wasn’t great and she had been racing more than I had this spring.  Smart move – run a strong 10K rather than kill yourself for a half you don’t really care about.

Pushed Katie to her PR and met Kelly at the finish.  Cheered Monica in.  This race features a finisher’s necklace.  In previous years, I wasn’t so impressed, but this year’s necklace is really cute!  It’s a silver disc that says “run” in script with a little black bead hanging next to it.  Initially, I thought I would just add the necklace to my medal hanger, but this necklace is definitely going into wardrobe rotation.

After the race, there were nice little meal boxes and wine, since Barefoot Wine was a sponsor.  Not a bad way to celebrate.  But we had bigger and better things planned.

Since this was one of Katie’s last weekends in town, we headed off to Chick and Ruth’s.  An Annapolis staple.  Delicious. And we had to have the 6 pound milkshake.  Six pounds of delicious, delicious strawberry milkshake.  And yes, we finished it.  Though we wouldn’t have finished without Monica’s pre-teen son.  That kid is a milkshake drinking pro.

I think I will be back for this 10K, but I don’t know that I’d ever do the half.  This was advertised as a 3:30 half, which is a respectable time.  But as we were leaving, the clock was at around 3 hours and they were already opening up the lanes of traffic, forcing the runners to run along the sidewalk.  Apparently, there was some sort of disconnect between the race organizers and the police.  Monica was glad she had decided to not run the half after all, and we hoped that those runners out there had safe finishes.  There were lots of first-timers out there, and when the race plan doesn’t go as expected, that can be very tough.