Bring on the crazy...

When I got the flyer in the mail for the Charm City Run 20-miler (yes, I know you are already considering my mental state as diminished), I thought to myself "this would be fun but I don't want to do it alone."  That meant I needed to find someone equally crazy to run it with me.  Here's where my good friend Lara comes in.  She runs longer distances than any of us and does it with her lip gloss still looking fantastic.  When I told her about the race, she was in.  Score!  Nice long race and a few hours with one of the toughest people to pin down in Anne Arundel County.

The race was a point to point on the NCR trail, so we started out up near the PA border and ran south to Hunt Valley on a very slight downgrade.  At the start the weather was almost cool and the temperature stayed mild through the whole race....though it was humid as all get out.  The humidity came into factor several times throughout the race.  By the middle of it, our clothes were more wet than the week before during the A-10 when it actually poured rain on the race....yeah, it was that humid.

At any rate, we cruised down the trail, catching up on the past several months in detail, keeping relatively close to a 10 minute pace.  For us, this was more a training run than a race so there was no pressure.  We chatted and chatted.  At one point we ran up on a couple folks who entered the conversation (we would end up leapfrogging this duo through the whole race) and sped up after some parts of the conversation got a bit weird.

That wasn't the last weird thing on the course though.  At one point we came up to a house with a gnome obsession that backed up to the trail.  There were at least 50 gnomes in this yard, maybe upward of a hundred.  Bizarre, but humorous. 

Then at the mile 12 water stop was a great surprise.  The diva and my husband were helping out at the water table.  Check out my little race volunteer...she refused to let anyone else hold the gatorade cups as they were being filled.  She'll be great in a few years.

The rest of the run was really good.  Both mine and Lara's hamstrings were tight just north of the knee caps, but everything else felt pretty good.  For us anyways.  About half a mile before the finish we came up on a poor guy who had such a horrible charlie horse that his whole leg was wracked in tremors.  He couldn't move and it was on a treacherous part of the course on a road with no shoulder and oncoming traffic.  Lara and I stayed with him until he could stand again, and then headed up to the finish with smiles on our faces.  Twenty miles went by very fast.

I loved this race.  I would do it again.  I may even consider the NCR Trail Marathon later this year.  We'll see. Happy trails!!!

Stats -
Miles:  20
Time:   3:25:26 (average pace of 10:16 per mile)
Location:  NCR Trail from PA border to Hunt Valley
Feeling:  the hamstring held up and the attitude was spectacular