Run the Bridge

For the past few Novembers I’ve traversed the Ben Franklin Bridge and the Camden Waterfront as part of the Run the Bridge 10K in Camden, NJ.  It has a great view of the Philly skyline, the whole running-on-a-bridge thing, and finally finishes in the baseball stadium in Camden.  This year, as usual, I would be joined by 3,000+ of my closest friends, but more importantly, it marked Lauren’s longest race ever.

The extra hour of sleep from Daylight Savings was welcomed with open arms, but it was still an early morning when the alarm went off.  After the usual granola, yogurt, banana, and Gatorade breakfast, it was time to hit the road.  Fall weather has definitely hit the area, so the pre-race was occupied with trying to stay warm and finally a little jog with Lauren over to the starting line.  The photographer caught us on our way over…

We settled into the crowd at the start and looked at the upwardly sloping bridge looming just ahead of us.  The bridge is about a mile and half across, so once you’ve completed an out-and-back loop on it, you’re already about 3 miles into the 6.2 mile race.  I told myself to push early, but not be disappointed with my time in the first mile, since you’re climbing a majority of the way.  Instead, I decided to focus on two mile increments as indications of my pace.

Mile 1-2 was exactly where I wanted to be on the clock, and gave me the opportunity to see Lauren cruising along in the other direction on the Bridge.  With few people to pace off of, I concentrated on maintaining contact with a runner in orange who had just passed me.  It served me well through miles 3-4, when the real pain began to creep in.

I was happy to be hitting my splits, but somehow I couldn’t maintain my pace over miles 5 and 6.  Most of my speed work lately has been geared toward the half marathon in December, so I’m hoping that’s all that was holding me back.  I’m sure I could have pushed a little harder as well because my Garmin data after the race showed that I was only running in heart rate zone 4 out of 5.  There is no need to race in a comfortable zone 4 over the last 2 miles of a 10k, so now I know to push it more down the closing stretch.

Finally, I rounded the corner into the stadium and picked off a guy who’d been hovering around me the whole race.  The amount of kick I had at the finished proved I’d been a bit too conservative in the latter stages of the race, but my time was still a two plus minute PR at this race.  (47:57 in 2007, 43:27 in 2008, 41:13 in 2009)  My fastest 10K still remains the run at the end of the DC Olympic Triathlon, but I think that course may have been a bit short.

However, my race was far from over as I booked it to the car to grab the camera and hopefully catch Lauren finishing strong.  I positioned myself just past mile 5 and hoped I hadn’t missed her yet.  In no time she came flying around the corner and I snapped a few shots of her zooming by.

 

I then took off for the stadium just in time to see her race in and not only beat her goal of breaking an hour, but finish under 59 minutes as well.  It was a really impressive first 10k, especially with work keeping her from training over the last week!

After grabbing some of the post-race snacks, we took a celebratory picture and headed off to enjoy a well-deserved brunch!