Race Flashback: Bellin 10K

Since this race was 2 months ago (wherehasthetimegone?!?!) today, seems like a perfect day to post it

Back in June, my Sister and I were registered to run the Bellin 10K up in Green Bay.  The race was Saturday June 11, 2011 and turned out to be my favorite race as of the writing of this post.  I was super nervous for some reason in the day or so leading up to the race.  I had had a few very unsuccessful runs in the two weeks previous and had just cut gluten out of my diet to try to help me feel better so my usual race fuel was not on the approved Diet Plan of the week.  Up until Friday night I was soooooo nervous!  To the point that the Sister was pretty much screaming at me to stop being such a fool.  I took off a little early from work to try to beat the traffic rush so we made it up to GB by about 6 or so and got checked into our hotel.

We stayed at the Aloft Green Bay hotel that ended up being only about 1 mile from our race shuttle!  We decided it was safest with our new dietary restrictions to pack a picnic dinner to eat at the hotel, which turned out to be a very good idea!  We packed a tasty pasta salad and lots of bananas and nut butter.  After eating dinner, we drove towards the mall to do a little shopping but never made it farther than Dick’s Sporting Goods  I ended up getting my Kinvara’s here and a few other random running goodies (including some crazy pink running shorts for Disney )  After Dick’s we headed to my favorite grocery store chain in the whole wide world, Woodman’s, for a couple little snacks to tide us over for the night and the next day.  (Favorite Granola In the World was first purchased on this trip!)  Then we headed back to the hotel to try to get some sleep.  I think we maybe succeeded in getting like 3 hours of sleep before the crack ‘o dawn alarms started to ring… (sleeping in a hotel is hard enough but this time we had a nice concert of heavy bass sounds and also a dog barking down the hall :S)

All bibed up and ready to go!

The morning of the race we were up so early for a Saturday to have time for a little pre-run breakfast and prep time.  At about 7am we drove to the shuttle stop and hopped on the school bus shuttle to the start line.  This turned out to be the best idea of our morning as the traffic was a mess as we got near the race and we would have had an awful time parking!  I believe we were at the start line area by about 7:30am.  By this time I was starving.  Not just like “oh I could eat right now” but my stomach was growling soooo loud!  Luckily I found a random (post-race) banana to steal on our walk to the start line!  Nasty looks ensued but I just smiled and said Thank you  So glad I found this banana though because we ended up standing in our corral until about 8:30 as we were one of the last ones to start.

Sister and Me - Ready to get this party started!

Once we finally crossed over the start line, we were off!  We decided to both run this race at our own paces so we were split up from minute one but that probably ended up being a good thing because the crowds were kinda dense and it would have been hard to navigate two people through them.  I think about 17,000 people total completed the race and when it is only a 10K, they don’t spread out very much we found!!  I did a really good job of keeping my pace slow and steady at the beginning and kept my heart rate very calm for the first three or so miles.  It was around mile 1 or 2 with all the people around and the perfect running weather and a great mix on my iPod, courtesy of Sister, that I couldn’t help but run with this huge goofy grin on my face and was just totally at peace and having so much fun!  Then at about mile 3, I decided I wanted to see what I was capable of running so I decided to speed things up a bit and really race the second 5K.  I ended up finishing in about 57 minutes which is 3 minutes faster than my goal time!  Plus I ended with negative splits so I knew I had paced myself to have plenty of energy to make it to the end!  It was such a great feeling finishing a race I was proud of!

At this point I figured it was time to try to make my way back to the finish line area to wait for the Sister to cross the line!  It ended up working out perfectly and I was able to see her and snap a picture  I could tell she had a blast too!  But she was very happy to find me with a little homemade energy drink at the finish line

We grabbed our special finisher medals and a few (read half dozen) bananas and found our way back to the hotel for a much needed bowl of oatmeal, some coffee and a shower!  That was the stinkiest school bus I ride I care to ever go on…..

Finisher Medal and the T-Shirts

After showering, we headed to find some lunch and then made the trip back down to pick up our pup, stop at a graduation party and then go home and sit on our butts for the rest of the day!  Even though it was only a 10K, we were both just wiped!  But I am already excited for next year