This Sunday, August 9th I ran in my first Falmouth Road Race. I mentioned training here and there in my blog and on my flickr (and even posted my training schedule). Everything was going swimmingly until my last long run about a week ago and somehow I mangled my knee. OH. THE. PAIN. But I had come this far – I was running in that race. So I iced, and ibuprofened, and iced, and ibuprofened some more. I did a couple of light runs (under two miles) leading up to the race to test out the knee and …. well. Let’s just say, I was nervous.

Two miles with a little ache is one thing. But uh, 7.3 miles on a difficult course is completely different. (Of course I feel foolish even typing that as I have two friends who just finished a MARATHON. Hi Jeannie. Hi Chris. I still don’t know how you did it.)

View Falmouth Road Race in a larger map

This map doesn’t even begin to show the hills. OH THE HILLS. Everyone was all “The first three miles are the worst! SEVEN HILLS!” Let me tell you – those hills- WERE CAKE. You know what sucked? THE LAST HILL. Just after mile 6. I take a turn after the Island Queen Ferry station and BAM I hit this loopy road with a stupid hill and it’s hot and my knee is throbbing and I’m thinking “Please, someone say something funny to take my mind off this PAIN.” And then I saw a Banana. And laughed so hard out loud that I knew I was going to kick ass and that’s just what I did.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So I headed down to Falmouth with Andrew late Friday night. We decided to get down there early and just chill out before the race and have ourselves a lovely Cape weekend. I split my time between Andrew’s parent’s house and a close family friend’s home. And like I said, I iced and iced and iced some more.

We did take some time off from all the icing to go grab a beer (Shut up it’s carbs. And shut up, I literally only had one.)

Saturday night I got into bed at 8:30. Apparently not only is my body falling apart, but I’m going to bed before the sun goes down. I am an 80 year old woman.

Whatever. I was ready to go at 7:00 am. I got dressed, put on my number, tied on my chip then Andrew, Tyler (his sister’s boyfriend) and I went up to the shuttle buses in Falmouth Center where we met up with the one and only John Wall (of The M Show fame).

We headed down to the Race Start … along with a few others ….

10,000 people ran officially. And by “officially” I mean had numbers*. It’s estimated another couple of thousand people jumped in without numbers.

(* The numbers didn’t necessarily line up with the names ……. Y’all. It’s hard to get a number for this race. And I had a friend who wasn’t going to run, so she did the right thing and let me run as her. Thanks JP!! I know it’s wrong, and yes I’ll get my own FOR REAL next year. Blah blah, guilty, sorry, blah.)

Down at the start we saw a number of characters. Literally. Wonder Woman, some butterfly girl, a man dressed up as a lobster (honestly that outfit had PADDING. How he did not melt is beyond me.), and of course Banana Man.

I was surprised how easy the run was. Which I know I shouldn’t be, I trained – but it still surprises me that I can do a lot of work and make something as big as a hilly 7.3 mile run seem like cake. What was NOT easy was running 7.3 miles on NARROW, WINDING streets with 10,000 other people. I did a good job of staying to the side and running around and ahead people who were paced slower than me, but eventually, as people in their homes set up hoses and sprinklers all along the route, it got harder to navigate not only the run, but around everyone else (who were trying to get in the path of some much needed water). There was a good mile/mile and a half where I just gave into the pace of the crowd instead of pushing myself to what I knew I could run. In hindsight, this was much better for my poor knee anyway.

It really got hard after the sixth mile in general, and especially on my knee. The streets were narrower and even more winding, the sun was pounding down, and that last hill – if I may be frank? Was a bitch.

But that’s when I turned my head and saw BANANA MAN from the beginning of the race. He made me laugh and gave me a second wind. I ended up chasing him all the way to the finish line (I’m hoping the official race photographer* caught me in some pics with him.)

(* Yeah can we talk about the race photographer? They put him at the TOP of the last hill. SMILE!)

I couldn’t stop smiling after the race was over. I knew I had met all my goals which were as follows:

1.) Finish
2.) Actually run the whole race
3.) Finish in less than 70 minutes*

(*I usually run between 8 and 9 minute miles – but between my knee and not knowing how the crowd would affect my run, I gave myself 10 minute miles for the race)

I finished in 01:09:32.

I grabbed a water, I grabbed a popsicle and then I walked (yes I still had more milage to go) all the way to my friend’s house and the party began.

It was an awesome weekend. And I can’t wait to do it all again next year.

Now I just need to find my next road race!