Many things:

1. There are immense, stupid lines for the portapotties. DO NOT wait in line for these. Go pee on a tree. Listening to the National Anthem and then the countdown for the race while looking at 20 people in front of you getting ready to pee sucks.

2. Practice drinking while running. I had never done it before. It’s much harder than it looks.

3. Don’t get sick the Friday before a race. Don’t pull a groin the Thursday before a race. Be annoyed that you have legitimate excuses for a cruddy time but that you still have a CRUDDY TIME.

4. Everyone has lots of advice. Listen to your own body. For example, I had gotten accustomed to running every other day and I took a week off before the race. My body felt out of practice. Also, my stretching routine (ha!) occurs after I run, so when I didn’t run, I didn’t stretch. I think I would have been better served running my normal schedule this week.

5. I didn’t lie about my time to get into the second corral. I honestly thought I could run a faster time. That being said, I will always overestimate now because the crowd thing was tough to take.

I don’t know exactly why my last 5k sucked. I couldn’t run any faster and I couldn’t accelerate (I tried once and felt the cramps waiting for me). Did I need to get some calories into me? Did I overexert myself in the early part of the race? Had I not trained enough? Was it simply too humid for long runs? I want to do another one to figure this out.

5k: 24:09
10k: 48:37
10 mile: 1:19
Total time: 1:46:37
Pace: 8:07