Cherry Blossom 10-miler: Race-Eve Report

Happy Monday Tuesday and cheers to the 39th Annual Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, my first-ever 10-mile race!  It was a really great race and did much to drown the bitterness I had left over from last weekend's National Marathon. 

In order to run the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler, you have to enter a lottery in December and get chosen to run.  A lot of people do not get entry, although with 15,000 runners yesterday that was hard to believe.  

My girlfriend Katie who lives up closer to Baltimore came down on Saturday afternoon to go to packet pick-up with me and so we could head to DC together on race day.   I was a bit surprised (and somewhat annoyed) that packet pick-up was only on a Saturday and not Friday, when almost everyone is downtown for work anyway. And it was only in one location: downtown at the National Building Museum.  While I adore the NBM, I have to trek downtown every day via the metro for work, and I wasn’t especially enthused about having to go down in the middle of a Saturday to pick up my race packet. 

There was also a Capitals game going on 2 blocks away as well as a lot of Cherry Blossom spectators visiting the city, so I thought it would be crazy to attempt to drive and hope I’d miraculously find parking for under $20.  (It would not have happened.)  Considering the “Jingle-All-the-Way 10K,” which is a much smaller race, has packet pick-up for TWO days (Friday and Saturday) and in multiple locations in DC, Maryland and Virginia, it did not make sense to me that this very famous race with so many participants only had one location on one day and for a very short window of time--yet another DC-ism with which I will be eternally befuddled.

Due to my strong aversion to switching trains, Katie and I took the metro to the closest stop that did not require transfering and walked from there.  It wasn’t a long walk and, at the time we got on the train, the sun was shining and the weather was fine.  As we popped out of the metro though, we found that the sun had vanished in favor of quite a vicious rainstorm.  Neither of us, masterminds that we are, remembered an umbrella or a raincoat, and by the time we’d trekked to the NBM, we were soaked and freezing.  Fortunately the rain had stopped by then.  Unfortunately, the line for packet pick-up was out the door of the museum. 

I couldn’t believe it!  Although the line was not as horrific as it initially appeared, it was still ridiculously long.  I think we waited in line for about an hour or so to pick up our bibs. (I don’t even wait in line that long to ride Space Mountain, my favorite ride, in Disney World!)  We picked up Cassie’s race bib too, since she was coming straight to the race from Baltimore on Sunday morning.

We picked up our super cute race t-shirts and strolled around the expo for a bit.  There were some good races we mentally added to our to-do list: The Malibu Marathon being at the top!  (the medal is inticing!)  We also saw the booth for the “Maryland Double.”  They were displaying last year’s medals, which are very awesome, but I was hoping for a sneak peek at this year’s bling…no such luck, I’m afraid.  I’ll be in suspense for a little while longer. 

Neither one of us was in a real “shopping mood.”  There were plenty of booths and lots of stuff to peruse and buy, but after waiting in that bib-pick-up line so long, we both felt a little spent—and hungry!  We walked over to Clyde's in Chinatown for some beers and an early dinner.  It was only 4:45pm, maybe we'd make it to bed early tonight? 

Dinner was yummy--Clyde's is a sure bet for tastiness--but I was envious of all the Caps fans filling up the bar.  I wanted to be getting drunk and rowdy at a hockey game, instead of limiting my beer intake to two.  (Nevermind the fact that I'd been out every night the previous week....how quickly I forget!)  We ordered desserts to-go, so we'd have something carbby to look forward to once we got back home and settled.  

We made a quick stop at the grocery store for morning bagels and some Viatmin Water (on super-sale for 75 cents--hurrah!) Then came home to devour our desserts, watch "House" for a couple of hours and get some rest so we could be awake in time for our race!

I have to say, spending the day before a race with other runners makes me more excited for a race, but it also makes me more nervous about it, because it becomes more of my focus than it would be otherwise. 
A full race-report to come....stay tuned.  I'm looking forward to hearing how others enjoyed the race as well.  I've already read a few interesting race reports.