If you look real close, you can see me...
It’s funny how we can be so close to something so big, and never know about it. Kind of like living with a big ‘ol buffalo in your den and waking up one day and realizing it’s been there the last 5 years or so. That’s a little how I felt when I heard about the Bridge Run down in Charleston, SC. Granted, I’ve only been running a little over 3 years, but I was still surprised that I’d never even known about a 10k that has been run annually since 1978 and which now attracts more than 30,000 runners each year, and this year was no exception. A record 40,000+ registered, and just under 35,000 showed up and ran, so I felt like I had a good shot at finishing in the top 10…thousand.
Just to give some comparison to the numbers, here’s what some other famous races draw:
- Boston Marathon: around 25,000
- New York Marathon: around 45,000
The number of runners was about 2.5 times the population of my hometown and a little over half the size of my entire county. From what I understand, previous years the gun has sounded and everyone just took off, so with the growing crowds they decided to use a wave start this year and we were herded into corrals based on our expected finish time. I registered in the 49:00-60:00 minute finishers, and apparently so did about 33,000 other folks, so I ran in a crowd the entire race. That part of the experience was pretty frustrating, because I had really hoped to go sub 50:00, which meant an average pace of around 8:00/mile, but I knew right away that it would be very difficult when I ended the weaving in and out of mile 1 in 8:21. Still, I was hopeful that the crowd might thin after that first mile. Ummm, no. Continue reading
