My 1st 10K~Cooper River Bridge~

Who would have thought I would be running??? Not me this time last year...boy can things quickly change and or evolve in one's life.

I really wanted to get my legs toned so my gym buddy from the YMCA finally begged me enough to come out and walk the massive hills with them at 5 am during the week. I felt as though no further progress was happening so I decided to give it a try and everything slowly progressed from there. At this point, my AP was training via C25k to gear up for her 5K run (3.1 miles) and clueless me didn't have a clue about the program or the distance associated with the various races (5K, 10K, 13.1K etc). Like I said, running was not on the radar. Eventually, I invited a friend to join us in the mornings and walking the hills finally turned into sprinting them. A month later, I found out about Black Girls RUN! and joined my local group which allowed me to meet/run with various newbie runners and a few veterans also. I call it a huge fitness party with TONS of support, accountability and encouragement.

During the fall months, I ran one to three times per week, weight trained in the mornings and continued to sprint the hills (before going to the gym) weekly until the weather got too cold for me. In late October and early November, I ran my first two 5K's and never thought twice about running a 10K (6.2 miles) race. Well, the Cooper River Bridge Race scared and excited me tremendously due to the popularity and size but I finally took a leap of faith and signed on up for it (I always wanted to visit Charleston, SC and many of my running buddies were doing it for the first time) in January.  Here's my results:

Distance	10K
Clock Time	1:19:41
Chip Time	1:01:44
Overall Place	10871 / 36751
Gender Place	4158 / 21821
Division Place	752 / 3183
Age Grade	49.3%
5K	0:31:20
Pace	9:57

My goal was a 10 minute pace; so I'm especially happy with the final results since my knees were bothering me since early February due to intense cross fit and weight training. Furthermore, once the race started, my left knee along with my right and left sides began paining me but stopping was not an option so I prayed and laid hands on those areas while running. My mind said keep it moving up and over that darn bridge. Naturally, I plan on beating my time at the second go round.

With 44,000 runners, it was quite an experience despite the race starting over an hour late and being lied to as we stood in our corrals anxiously waiting to begin. Besides the mentioned hiccups above, I had a challenging yet pleasant race.

See you next year COOPER!!!