Mark grew up in the area, he has never done the bridge run. Well, now he is a runner, and just had to do this race. After much, MUCH debate, information gathering, and route studying, we decided to drive and park by the start on the Mount Pleasant side.
Again, big race, so you have to get there early. The race was scheduled to start at 8am. They asked everyone to be lined up at the start line by 7am, and buses left the Charleston side by 6am. We left the in laws house at 5:50, stopped at Starbucks ;), drove to Mt. Pleasant, and found a place to park at a gas station at about 6:35. (It's cool, we filled up our Tahoe there before we left.) It was still dark when we got out of the car and started putting on our race numbers.
We had a relatively short walk to the end of the starting line giving the false impression that we parked close. It took awhile to get to the real starting line. Now, I signed up to run an "under 1 hour" 10K and ended up with a coveted RED number.
I could have gone to the C corral, but stayed in the G, cause I had great company:
Look at that belly:
About 7:30, we decided to make a run to the bathroom.
We finished in plenty of time and headed back to our corral and await the start.
And then we waited. And waited. Again, it was suppose to start at 8am. With our corrals, I really didn't expect to start until 8:30, but that passed and we never really knew what was going on. The announcers would say that a group was about to start and then they never did. Finally, at 9am, an hour late and 2 hours after we had arrived, and another trip to the bathroom, the race started and our group started at 9:30a. It was a ways to the start line. You don't even see it here:
Oh, there is is!
We finally start AND...it was the slowest start of a race that I have ever encountered. Pace was about 11-12 min/miles. I try to weave through the crowd to get ahead of the slow runners. But then up ahead, there was the bridge:
Getting closer to the bridge:
I think you can see of of these slow runners in some of these pictures. As we got closer to the bridge and had to merge so we slowed down again:
Then we hit the incline. Really, I didn't think it was bad:
Finally the top!
The downhill was nice.
I just want to take a moment to explain, I do not mean to complain about the slow runners and walkers. My complaint is that there were people in a faster corral then I was who obvious had no intention of running a step. And even though there was signs everywhere, kept walking on the left side instead of the right so I had to run around them.
About mile 4, the extra hour of heat and the hour later since I had eaten and drank water caught up with me. I didn't feel do good when I finished, but my time was 1:02:43.
Turned out to be just in time, because the race started running out of water after that. There was a nice post party celebration, but we had to take the shuttle back to get to our car. It was a school bus. Nice!
I made the comment somewhere that even though it was a 10K, it felt like a marathon since it just took so long. Well, look, I am going to lose a toenail, just like a marathon!
This is a race that was suppose to be super fun that many people do every year. I don't think we really got all that upset by the wait, but it was nice to read some validation about the announcers!
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20120402/PC16/120409872
I thought the race was ok, but not sure if I would do it again. We will see.
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