Three days after I returned to Clemson after VR, I took a trip to Charleston for the Cooper River Bridge Run to run my first 10K. My sister, Victoria, was also running, so my parents and youngest sister, Briana, also came down to watch us run.
My traveling companions from Clemson to Charleston were Austen, a labmate who was also running the bridge and is an awesome runner, and Allen, who was doing the after the bridge run bike ride the following day. I asked Austen to bring his iPod adapter to my car so we'd have music to listen to...and then we found out that my car does not have a cassette player, which is what his iPod adapter is. So, he spent the first forty-five minutes of our trip burning CDs from his laptop for us to listen to. For the record, he has pretty good taste in music.
We saw lots of interesting things during the journey. We talked about lots of other interesting things.
Eventually we dropped Austen off in Summerville so he could meet his friends. Then Allen and I went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's because it is delicious and I was hungry. I ate a giant salad and lots of those croutons. (Did you know that those croutons are so good because they deep fry them? Well, I didn't.) After that I dropped Allen off where he was staying and I went to meet my family.
The run goes from the Mt. Pleasant side of the bridge to the Charleston side of the bridge, and the roads close down on the bridge the morning of, so my family was staying on the Mt. Pleasant side so we'd be able to get to the starting line soon. Driving over the bridge to Mt. Pleasant I was really nervous. The bridge seemed so long and so steep! It was my nemesis. I had ran a straight 10K only two times before then, and that was last week on the road my family lives on, so I didn't feel well prepared.
My family came with lots of delicious snacks, mmm. We stayed up until 11 or so talking and then went to bed.
We woke up early the next morning and got ready. Victoria and I ate bagels and put on our running bibs.
It took FOREVER to get to the dropoff point because of all the traffic, and when we got out, we still had a good way to go to the starting line. By this time, I really had to use the bathroom (nervousness and too much water to drink!) and the lines for the portapotties were 10 people long. Victoria was too nervous and went ahead to the start line but I waited in line knowing that it would make for a much less miserable run.
However, due to this, I didn't get to the start line in time and had to begin with the walk/run category. Normally I am a pretty laid back kind of person and am not competitive or aggressive, but that morning I was so angry at all the people around me for not getting out of my way so I could run. I guess it was the adrenaline! I was ready to tackle some people. Signs everywhere instructed walkers to stay right and runners to stay left, and I was running on the very left edge of the road and people were walking stopping to take pictures every 30 seconds directly in front of me. I spent the entire race weaving through people to get ahead of them, which slowed me down a lot. The run itself wasn't bad though, I guess because I wasn't pushing as hard as I wanted to. I finished in a little over an hour. I was hoping to finish under an hour but given the circumstances I'm proud of my finish time.
At the finish festival I found Austen first. We had a sweaty victory hug, ranted about people walking getting in our way while we were running, and determined to redeem ourselves in a future race. By luck we found our friend Luke from Clemson. Since I didn't have a camera I took a mental snapshot of us :) And then, miraculously, I found Victoria. We had planned to meet by the portapotties, but there were five billion of them, so we're going to pick a better meeting spot next year because it was only by luck (or God looking out for us) that we met. We went and grabbed goodies from all the people giving away stuff then walked to her dorm room to shower and change.
Not having really thought this through, I didn't have any clothes on that side of the bridge, and my family couldn't get over to meet us for hours. I wore some of Victoria's clothes, which was interesting because we wear the same sizes but are different shapes, haha. We walked with her roommate to Harris Teeter to pick up a few groceries. I was so tired but not hungry so I didn't eat. Then Mom and Dad came to pick us up. Driving to Folly Beach, all the sudden I realized that if I didn't eat I was going to die (my body has strange ways of expressing hunger these days). So we stopped at Chick-fil-a and ate. After that we checked out some really cool mural art near Folly Beach, then went out on the beach for like five minutes until we decided it was too cold and windy to actually enjoy it.
We went to dinner at Hyman's (it's touristy, yes, but also delicious, so be quiet, naysayers) where I regained all my running calories by eating fried flounder. And then Dad, in a spontaneous move, bought us all potato guns to play with. The parents and Briana then left and I went to Victoria's dorm room to stay the night. It was one of Victoria's friends' birthday so we ate brownies and a pie in celebration of that, and then a potato gun fight ensued. Finally it was bedtime. By this time I was exhausted. I slept like a rock all night.
I went to church with Victoria and her friends at Sanctuary (which I would recommend if you're looking for a church in that area). She then cooked us a delicious dinner of jambalaya and green beans, and then I sat with her at the desk while she took her shift and I waited to hear from Allen to say his bike ride was over.
We got the run results on Sunday online. My sister was 201st place for women (out of like 20,000)! Isn't that awesome?
We left Charleston around 5:00 and it took FOREVER to get back to Clemson. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant that definitely used to be a Quincy's. When we arrived home I had to go directly to the lab to finish algorithms homework. Lame.
Will I ever do the bridge run again? Definitely. Gotta redeem myself next year and get a time under an hour! I'll aim for 55 minutes--that's a just-under-nine-minute mile, which I can totally do. And it's not a difficult course! Will I ever run further than 10K? I don't know. Maybe I'll get to half-marathon one day, which is about twice a 10K. For the summer, though, I think I'll go light on the running to give my joints a break (and because it's so hot outside!) and go heavier on the swimming. Maybe there's a triathlon in my future?
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