This was my first race with the ROTE contingent! Unfortunately, I didn’t meet up with them til afterwards.
As the title indicates, this 10K is part of the Marine Corps Marathon weekend, and with that comes a lot of perks. The expo was possibly the best expo I’ve been to in a long time – and from what I hear, it was smaller than last year! Great goody bags with lots of fun samples, and amazing vendors. I got to talk to the KT Tape people (who have amazing customer service) and I finally bought the running necklace that I’ve been searching for. The one thing I didn’t find was a long-sleeved red technical shirt. They have them for men, but all the womens’ shirts were in “girly” colors. Not that I’m complaining about girly colors, but I really wanted red.
This race was on Halloween, which meant that there were a lot of people in costume. I am a little embarrassed to say that I was beaten by a guy in a crab costume running sideways. Yeah.
Strangely enough, this was my first 10K. I’m not sure how I missed this distance before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Sure, I had run 10Ks in training, but never as a race. I wasn’t sure how to pace myself. It wasn’t as long as a 10 miler, but definitely required more stamina than a 5K. Either way, first race, so it’s a PR, right?
Finished in 1:20:25! I struggled with letting my HR get too high, because it was “only” a 10K, so I shouldn’t have needed the walk breaks, right? Well, I paid for that later. I was absolutely wrecked by the end of the day. Of course, that could have been due to what I did the rest of the day.
I met up with a number of ROTErs and we made our way to around the 22 mile mark of the marathon, where we met up with even more ROTErs. And we cheered. And we cheered and we cheered and we cheered. We cheered on our friends and we cheered on strangers. We cheered until the last person passed us. And man, what fun that was. I think that might have been the best part of the day.