Baltimore Running Festival 2012

This past Saturday it was a no brainer that I take part in the Baltimore Running Festival this year since I am a city resident! It truly is a wonderful event with a marathon, half marathon, team relay, 5k, and kids fun run, all happening on the same morning! I just ran my first half marathon around three weeks prior so I was really excited to be able to better pace myself and beat my previous time.  I bought a super sweet Baltimore Ravens team color Baltimore shirt and decided to be extra spirited and run in a purple & black tutu because it would be fun! I spent Friday night making my tutu while watching Netflix and eating lots of carbs, because carb-loading is the best excuse to eat lots of food :)

Saturday morning the BRF has the full marathon start before the half, and eventually meet up early on in the half marathon course. The half started at 9:45 AM so I had a pretty relaxed morning with enough time to eat, drink some coffee, digest, use my bathroom and get ready. The street I live on was closed off because the marathon was actually running down it so I walked/jogged to the start line of the half. 

 I made it into my corral about 20 minutes before race time.  I realized in the corral I had left my iPod on my kitchen table so I panicked because all of my long runs had be ran with my iPod. Oh well.

The race ended up being fabulous! The weather was perfect, and the hills of Baltimore weren't too mean to me. It isn't an easy course though. It goes through some of the more sketchy parts of the city but the support from most of the residents and  lots of spectators was fabulous. There was lots of signs, cheering, music playing, and people handing out water/beer/candy to runners.  Honestly, wearing the tutu was the best decision I made that morning.  Without my iPod I really had to feed off the energy of other runners and the crowd.  I can't tell you how many times during the race I heard "Go tutu!" It really made me excited to keep running!

Around mile 8.5 I started to feel tired because I had been running at a 7:30 pace (what?!).  I slowed down to around 8 min/mi pace and fueled up with some gummi bears I packed, some Powerbar energy gels I grabbed from a water station around mile 9, and some candy corn from some spectators (SCORE!).  The end of the race is downhill, and I had a huge smile on my face.  I knew I had this but was just focused on getting a really sweet PR.  I pushed it at the end and ending up running a 1:43:23 which is a full FIVE minute PR from my first half less than a month ago at 1:48:24.  I was so happy.

The post-race area was a little crowded, and it was hard to figure out where to grab my free beer and meet up with my boyfriend.  The medal for this festival is awesome and has a big smiling crab on it. Also Baltimore is the home of Under Armour so all the runners in this festival get really nice UA shirts.  I was happy the half was a purple short sleeve shirt-I know I'll be wearing it all the time!  I think I'm going to bite the bullet and go for the full marathon next year! I encourage everybody to run in the Baltimore Running Festival next year if they get the chance.

Apparently early registration will start this week!