another year, another bridge run

over the weekend, i completed my 11th cooper river bridge run. i think it's 11. the first one was in 9th grade. and there were a couple absences due to torn ligaments and lack of motivation. but none the less, i do think it was my 11th trip to charleston for the event. i went back and looked at results starting in 1996. apparently 1999 was my year to peak b/c i ran a 49: something. that's hilarious. b/c this past weekend i clocked a 1:16. i did manage to walk 2 miles this time rather than running the whole thing, so that adds a little time. it's just funny to think about how you used to be and how you are now. reality of aging...setting in. oh well. i still haven't conquered the half marathon like our buddies rob and amanda, but that's ok. i'm doing a 5 miler in a month. i'll run the whole thing this time and i won't die.

i need to recount ONE event from this weekend at the race tho. my sis and her husband, rob and i set out at 6:50 AM to head over to the race start. we park and start walking down to the starbucks to meet another pal who i would be running/walking with. once we find her, my sis and i head off for the habitual porta potty stop. why rob didn't have to go i have no idea. after being in the potty line for 2 min., i realized that this is indeed a dumb idea to waste key stretching/chatting time while waiting to wee. so my sis and i run off down a side road, find a nice looking building that turned out to be a law firm with a big tree in back, so we ran in back of the tree and shaved about 30 min. off the predicted porta potty time by just handling our business like we were out camping. no big deal. this whole process of running to the porta potties, finding a tree, and jogging back to the starbucks where we would meet up with everyone took no more than 5 minutes. we get back and i ask my brother in law, where's rob? the response, "oh, he left." really? i say, thinking this is an early april fool's. but no, what had actually happened is that the annoying announcer lady who we nicknamed BARB (or maybe sharon) b/c she sounded like she was from Minnes-OH-ta, had been saying, "runners, get in line! it's almost time" (we still had 30 minutes to spare). well apparently, rob panicked, thought momentarily, will they care if i go ahead?, decided that we wouldn't care, and ran off to get in a pack of some 40, 000 people to wait for 30 minutes before ever beginning the race. needless to say, i had a leisurely walk to the start, stretched, chatted and laughed at Barb with the other people around me, and then started right on time. granted, rob ran the whole thing and my game plan from the start was to walk some, so it REALLY didn't matter, but still, i find it funny. panicky rob.