The Preakness 5k

Yesterday, hubby and I hit up Baltimore for The People's Preakness 5k.  The race setting consisted of the race track and surrounding streets at Pimlico Park, where the Preakness horse race is run (the second leg of the Triple Crown).  I saw this race last month and because of it's unique location, I kinda wanted to run it.  Convinced the hubby (which really didn't take too much convincing) and we got all signed up.

I liked the location and time the time of day (10:30 a.m. start), since I'm so not a morning person.  LOL!  We got ourselves up and wondered a bit about the race as the sky looked ominous.  But, we got in the car and headed down.  After being caught in traffic that we swore would keep us from getting to the race on time (we did and there was no cause for the delay we could see).

Parked the car and headed to registration where we picked up our bibs.  They were designed like jockey bibs with our number and a horse name. 

How fun is that?  I was really hoping for a diamond design, but eh.  It's ok.  It was still a cool bib.  Across the bottom are three pull-tabs.  The raffle ticket to hand in when you finish to qualify for some Preakness related raffle prizes, you hand in your premium (t-shirt or blanket) ticket after the race rather than before, and of course the all important beer ticket.  I put on my bib and magically became Materialistic Flack.  ;-)  I was hoping for a better name, but whatever.  It was cool.

My thigh muscle was not too happy with me Friday and it felt the same Saturday morning.  So, my goal simply was to run as much of the race as I could and enjoy the funness of the course.  After we stretched out, we headed to the starting area, but not before getting our picture taken in the starting gates!

I headed to the back, which is my typical starting spot.  I'm not a fast runner and I actually appreciated the announcer calling me a jogger.  It's all good.  I had a nice conversation with a couple of ladies about running and the positives and negatives of warm vs. cold weather running.  Oh, did I mention it was kinda raining?  Yea, a nice strong mist was happening all this time.  I was feeling hard-core for running a 5k in the rain.  LOL!

Then we heard the starter gun, which was actually the sound they make at the start of a horse race.  Having never been to a race before, I have no idea what it's called, but it wasn't just a boring old gun!  To go over the chip mats, you ran through those gates and over the mats.  As we did so, the rain starting coming down and wow.  I was nervous about the up-coming track portion of the race.  But, just as we came around the corner and hit the sand on the track, the rain slowed down and it went back to misting.  Phew!

The track.  It was rough.  I'm not going to lie.  It reminded me of the beach...and not the part down bear the water where it's easy to walk.  No.  This is the area that got wet from high tide, then started to dry out.  It wasn't easy and it was a little over a mile long.  As we came around the grandstand area, there was an announcer calling out names.  Because I was somewhat alone when I passed the volunteer, they called my name over the loud speaker, "Here comes Christina ------ riding Materialistic Flack from Mancester, PA!"  It was kinda funny.

We ran along the track here.  By the time I took this photo, they had cleaned up the track.

We left the track and ran along the stables.  I saw a few horses in their stalls, but not many.  We headed into the streets and to eat up miles, ran down one side of the street, turned around at the fence and ran up the other side.  I stopped at the water stop (there was only one) and grabbed a water.  Another runner stopped to drink and we started chatting, then took off together.  It was nice having someone to chat with as I ran.  I've never really had that before.  Being such a slow runner, there usually isn't anyone I know who runs at my pace.  When he hit the 2 mile marker (which was the first one I saw), my new running friend had to slow to a walk because the track did a number on her ankles.  So, off I went alone.

I came across a mom and son, whom I had been either following or leading for about a half a mile.  We had a fun little "competition" with the son.  I would say I couldn't believe he couldn't run faster than me, then he would take off.  It was kinda fun.  Sadly, at some point, I passed them because he just stopped caring.  Mom didn't though.  I felt bad for her. 

I turned the corner and thought I was almost at the finish line.  Go down the side street, turn into the stadium, and BOOM!  Done.  Got down the street, and headed into the stadium.  And kept running.  And running.  I passed a lovely lady and jokingly told her she shouldn't let me pass her.  Turns out, she had surgery 3 weeks ago and was worried about her stitches.  I felt awful.  So, I told her to walk and not catch me.  LOL!  I kept going and ahead of me was a tunnel.  Apparently, the race took you through an underground tunnel to the inside track.  I was nervous honestly because it was steep and kinda muddy from all the sneakers ahead of me.  I came up from the tunnel and turned right, thinking the finish line would be right there.  

The tunnel is back where that tent is towards the back of the photo.

Nope. Ugh.  Did see hubby cheering me on at that point.  Yea!  He took the above photo of me.  I need to raise my legs a bit more when I run.  LOL!  Went down this path and then it curved.  The lady behind me was my friend with the injury.  As I came up to the finish line, she caught up and said she was going to run in with me.  OK!  We picked up our feet and finished strong!  My gun time was 44:22, but my chip time was 43:29.  By no means was it a good run for me time wise, but it wasn't my worse either.  I was dealing with my right thigh muscle being in pain the whole time and dealing with the knee scrape.  Oddly enough, the elbow injury hurt when I was done.  Odd...

After the race, hubby handed me a water (THANK YOU!) and I grabbed a yummy Fruit Bites snack.  We then asked a nice lady to take our photo at the finishing line.

We then grabbed our shirts and beer.  There was a fun band playing and we wandered the inner circle area at Pimlico race track.  Who knows if we would have the chance to do that again?  Overall, it was a fun race and I'm glad we went for it.  The race track itself was challenging, but once done, it is kinda cool to say I've run the horse track at Pimlico.