Son Of A Bridge

by Kelly Milgie:

For those of you who read my last blog post, you may remember I have been training for my first 10K.  I ran the Cooper River Bridge Run 10K on March 31 and am proud to say I survived!  Though the day did not go as smoothly as I had hoped, after 01:06:40 and I crossed the finish line!

When my alarm went off at 4:30 that morning, I woke up excited and ready to go.  I had invested much of my free time training and the day had finally come. H3 @ Home Wellness Coach Amy Kelderhouse spent much of the morning reminding me to stay hydrated, eat breakfast and stretch.  It was about a half hour commute from where we were staying in Charleston to where the race began inMt.Pleasant. When entering Mt.Pleasant, I found out this race had 43,000 participants (a bit of information that Allison and Amy forgot to mention when they encouraged me to sign up for the race). They also failed to mention that we would begin running in waves.  The scheduled start time was 8:00 AM so around 6:30 AM Amy went up front to her wave and Allison and I got in line with our group.  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, but Allison did a great job distracting me until it was almost time to start. 

8:00 AM came and went and no one had begun running.  Next thing we knew it was after 8:30, and though there were announcements and music, no one filled us in on what was going on.  Long story short, my wave did not begin running until 9:30. By this time, I was hungry and a little discouraged but still excited to finally begin. 

The first mile was very smooth, taking Allison and I 09:40…. And then we hit the bridge, which to my disbelief was one mile uphill!  I had spent a decent amount of time training on the bridge here on Hilton Head, but it definitely did not prepare me for this! Another challenge I encountered was having to speed up to go around the people who stopped to walk or were jogging at a slower pace than I was (this is challenging for me to do in general, but running up hill made it even more difficult). To top it off, it was a rather windy day and we were of course running against the wind! Finally, we made it to the top of the never ending hill and I felt a bit of relief.  The rest of the race was spent trying to weave around the walkers and enjoying the entertainment that was taking place along the route.

When we finally crossed the finish line I had mixed emotions.  Though I did not have a specific time goal, I was hoping to be close to 60:00 and going over by 6 minutes was a little discouraging.  Then I allowed myself to realize that I just did something I had never done before and that is something to be proud of! Not only did I complete at 10K (without stopping to walk), one mile of it was up hill and the entire 6.2 miles were spent weaving around other participants.  I am pretty sure this was the hardest thing I have ever physically done but also one of the best things I have ever done.

After writing my last post, H3 Alum Lyle Orr commented that Amy and Jeff would have me running a ½ marathon before I knew it… Well Lyle, you were right – I plan to run the Disney ½ marathon in November – training begins soon!

[caption id="attachment_7743" align="alignleft" width="420" caption="Amy, Kelly and Allison the morning of the race"][/caption]

Have you enjoyed reading about Kelly's race exerience? Create a race memory of your own and join H3 Staff, H3 Alum and Hilton Head residents in this year's Devin's Dash 5K! Click here for more information.