First, full disclosure: The perennial ten-mile race was rerouted into 9.5, thanks to a crime scene investigation between miles 4 and 6. So please do not credit me with having run 10 miles today. MapMyRun credits me 9.6. That extra .4 might have been the death of me.

Back to our regularly-scheduled blogging.

The Cherry Blossom 10 Miler may be DC’s favorite race. With good reason. I’ve lived in DC going on eight years, and I still think running on the Mall and around Hains Point is absolute magic. And this time of year is so gorgeous – even the thousands of oblivious tourists (this year with selfie sticks!) cannot ruin the perfection of cherry blossom season.

Spring is even sweeter this year after a brutal winter that seemed like it would never end. The sun is finally out and today was perfect running weather. The morning started off chilly, especially because, like always, I insisted on getting to the starting area pre-sunrise for maximum porta potty access. Just like with Rock N Roll, I managed to hit the johns two times before heading to the corral! (More on that later. No really.) I waited till the last minute to give up my sweatshirt and check my bag to stave off the cold as long as possible.

In a final bulwark against the otherwise-inevitable morning chill, Scott and I did a very short run warm up around the Monument before heading to our corral. Once there, I ditched the ratty towel I’d been cocooning in and let the heat coming off my fellow racers keep the shivers at bay. (Gross? Whatever.) One of those fellow runners happened to be my crazy fast friend Lisa who is doing Boston next week. She’s awesome and inspiringly speedy.

We were in corral two – or the red wave – a major improvement over the first and only other time I did the Cherry Blossom, back in 2013. That year, despite having entered a projected finish time somewhere around 85 minutes, race organizers mistakenly placed me in the last corral. Pretty much the walker corral. I upgraded myself a few corrals that day, but not far enough, and spent the first half of that race throwing elbows to get to a reasonable pace group.

Today’s race was better in that regard – but still very crowded in the beginning. Cherry Blossom would definitely benefit from more corrals and a more protracted  start. Close to 20,000 people competed in the race, but there were only 6 waves, each home to runners of widely varying paces. Lisa, Scott, and I were towards the front of the second corral, crossing the start sensors 3:36 after the gun, and all three of us had to battle a motley of biped obstacles who were either overly ambitious or straight-up duplicitous when they predicted their finish times. It was especially bad over Memorial Bridge and back, the crowds and wave jumpers who inevitably hog the inside path probably added 30 seconds onto those miles.

With my white people problems out of the way now, I can overall call today a success. It was a perfect day, and I ran faster and stronger than I had any business doing based on the weeks since Rock N Roll USA and some apparently-questionable pre-race dining.

I’ve run a total of 23 miles since RnR just over a month ago. About a  week after that race I started getting the pre-stress fracture pain  I know so well climbing up my right shin. (Not the leg I usually splinter! Hurray for new experiences!) So I took a full week off my feet, and since then I’ve only done the mile each way to SolidCore a couple times a week.

Speaking of SolidCore, I took the week before RnR off from my favorite class; not so this time! I let those nihilists do their damnedest all week. On top of those hours of self-inflicted (expensive!) torture, rather than find a sub for my Saturday spin class yesterday, I agreed to sub a second class. My legs really thanked me for that double whammy. Miraculously though, they really felt ok today.

My insides however, did not. Not sure what we ate that made both our bellies so unhappy, but Scott and I were both hurting today. He says I’m the food poisoning equivalent of the canary in the coal mine, because any time a meal turns on me and the people I’m with, I’m the first to go down. It happened to six of my friends and I in Mexico a few years ago (remember, Kim?!) when a bad beach meal took me out of vacay mode a full 12 hours before it felled any other travelers. True to form, when the alarm went off at 5 this morning, I immediately knew something was wrong. Scott took Birk out while I hit snooze praying the sick would pass. It didn’t. I ended up pre-race fueling with ginger ale and saltines. Once at the race (we ubered)…well, I promised I’d bring those porta potty visits (plural) back into the convo, didn’t I? So necessary today.

My stomach mostly settled long enough to run and get to brunch. By the finish line though, last night’s dinner was seeking its revenge on Scott.  After some more QPPT (quality-porta potty time) we thought we were through the woods, so we slowly waddled the two miles back to our hood and found a spot that was already open at 9:45 for brunch. Things got bad again for Scott then, and went from bad to worse on our walk home. Once home, things got bad for me too. After we each showered and then spent a couple hours tagging out of the bathroom and wishing we lived in a city where we could afford 2 toilets, we decided we had to brave the outdoors: Birkin had to pee and we were out of ginger ale.

I’ll just stop there. Suffice it to say, it’s been a rough afternoon. (But at least Game of Thrones!)

Back to the race, I ended up with a 1:12:51. But since that was over 9.5 rather than 10 miles I’ll defer to MapMyRun which had me at a 7:37 min/mile pace. The last few miles my left knee started seizing up (again, yay new experiences?!) and I was starting to fade. Sometime after the mile 8 marker, Lisa came bounding up from behind me, and it gave me the motivation I needed to keep it quick to the end. I picked up the pace so I could stay just a behind her. She’s so fast, so to be finishing anywhere near her (even when she was taking it easy on a pre-Boston taper) was exciting and almost enough to ignore my knee (ignoring training injuries is sorta my thing) and to pardon the race coordinators for placing the finishing line up a hill. At least it really is great to finish a race and have the legs feel totally spent. Who knows if I could have handled the full 10?  (The knee is still not happy with me, so I’m rocking a sweet ice pack now. We’ll see how spin goes tomorrow!)

One last white lady gripe before I sign off: you have to pay extra to get a Cherry Blossom medal. I ended up spending a boatload on this race because I upgraded my shirt to a performance T (between sleeping naked and being incredibly vain, what use have I for a shapeless cotton T-shirt?) and I paid for the medal. Because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count otherwise. Like, Scott might not have actually run a 10 (9.5) mile race today. He definitely had an unpleasantly intimate morning with several porta potties, but I don’t think he actually ran a race.

Next up: Tri season! Kinetic Sprint on May 10th. I’ve swam twice now since 2014, so I think I’m ready.