Oops, I did it again...

It's official, I completed the inaugural Tar Heel 10 Miler on Saturday April 26th with the official time of 1:52:29! Yeah me!! My only question for the course designer - - WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! The race STARTED and ENDED with two challenging hills - just look at this...

Yep, this is mile ten and we're running up this mother-load hill!! I so tried to pass this guy! When we reached the top of the hill we took a right into a parking lot and wound through some stancions to where the finish line was. I pushed and pushed and I know this guy heard me coming up behind him 'cause he poured on a little extra, too! In the end, I wasn't able to pass him! That's okay, though. I'm sure it helped me knock off a second or two of my final time.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful course. It wound all through Chapel Hill and downtown Carborro and all through some very older, established neighborhoods. The views were breathtaking. Maybe if I hadn't been admiring peoples' landscaping and architecture I would've been even quicker to finish! And I would've loved to have stopped and listened closer and enjoyed the man playing his banjo in his front yard - but I did have someplace to be (yep, a man in his front yard in a lawn chair playing his banjo and singing like a bird - it IS Chapel Hill after all!).

One perk to this race, my husband is a cop in Chapel Hill. As such, we parked the car in the PD parking lot and I got a personal escort (okay, so I had to ride in the back of a police patrol car) to the starting line! I LOVED IT!!! And when I was done, I was picked up and delivered back to my vehicle. Isn't having connections great! The only downside was that Mike was not able to run this race with me. He's still recovering from his - well, you know, - his hiney surgery. But he did feel well enough to go with me and stand along the sidelines encouraging me on! I saw him at mile 3 and at the end at about 9.5 miles. It's our plan to try to run this together next year - as long as I'm able to walk!

I don't have another race planned for the immediate future so I'll be on the hunt - don't want to get lazy. I did see on the news Saturday night that there's a woman in Cary or Raleigh that's started a beginners Triathelon (swimming, biking and running). From what I heard it sounded very "user/beginner" friendly. It may be too late for me to train my body for biking and swimming this year but at least I'm aware of it and could maybe prepare for next year. It's so very important to have personal goals, wouldn't you agree?

(...wow, you'd think those hips would be a lot more slender with all this running...what's up with that?!)