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Disclaimer: I received a free bib for this race through the Rock’n’Blog program. No other forms of compensation were given, and all opinions are my own.
I thought a subtitle for this race might be “the one with all the hills”, so I figured I’d start this race recap with that. I was nervous about this race because I heard that it was hilly, and I hadn’t had any hills to train on where I live, so I thought I might be unprepared. On Saturday I ended up walking 7 miles around St. Louis, which isn’t ideal the day before a race, and I said multiple times “I wonder if I’ve done enough”. I completed my race traditions all week, went to the expo on Saturday (it was smaller than I expected with almost no samples- it was a bit disappointing), ate pasta for dinner, and watched Spirit of the Marathon II with my friend Jill. Then I watched “The Fun Run” episode of the office as I fell asleep at 10:30- so that was an ideal part of the race.
I should mention that I ran this race with my friend Jill. We met in 1st grade when we ice skated together (we skated to Bippity-boppity-boo the first year and the chicken dance the year after), and then went to high school together. Neither of us were runners until recently, so it’s fun that we have so much history together and both ended up in this same place.
Our alarms went off at 5 am and we ate Clif Bars and Bananas before getting ready and packing up our stuff. I hate having to check out of hotels before races, but at least the process went quickly. We ended up walking about 2 miles by the time we got into our corral, as we had to walk from the hotel (Drury Inn right next to the Arch) to the race area, and then find gear check. Things were really hard to see in the dark, so that was a bummer.
The race started at 7:00 and we crossed by about 7:10. The sun was rising in front of us over the Arch and old capital building which made for a beautiful race start!
Right before I crossed the starting line.
I didn’t even notice that we started the race by climbing a hill! Mile one we wound around the Cardinals Stadium which was fun to see. It was chilly at the race start, about 36 degrees (no wind!), so I ended up wearing my throw away sweatshirt until mile 2, and from then on out I had on gloves (I wore until mile 9), arm sleeves (a last minute decision after buying them at the race expo- I’d never run in them before!), a tank top, compression sleeves, and of course my sparkle skirt!
The first 4 miles flew by, and before I knew it I was taking my first 3 margarita shot bloks at a water stop. We hit mile 5 and I started to feel like I had to go the bathroom, so when I saw a port a potty without a line at it at mile 6, I jumped on in, which cost me about 45 seconds.
There were several bands out along the way, which was nice, but I didn’t think it was anything more than the Mini or Monumental. There were water and gatorade stops really often, which was nice, so I never felt like I was going thirsty.
My IT bands had started to bother me a week before the race, so I had no idea what they would do on this course, especially with all the hills. Somewhere after the 6 mile mark the outside of my right knee started to throb a bit, which is about the exact time and place that it started bothering me at the Monumental Half last fall. I yelled at it to get it’s act together, and in about a mile and a half it started to release and didn’t bother me nearly as much.
At mile 7 I took my next three shot bloks (Cran Razz this time), as well as a salt stick. I had taken a salt stick with my breakfast, and this seems to be helping the cramping issues I had back in 2013. We wound our way through several different district areas (SLU Campus, a theater looking district, etc…) before we hit some beautiful neighborhoods. The streets were lined with trees full of changing colors, and it was gorgeous! The miles absolutely flew by after that.
Somewhere around mile 9 (maybe?) we started to climb a hill that lasted a full mile. A woman ran up alongside us and said “Gosh- I think they’ve had us run every single hill in this city”. Ironically, by this point I actually found that running up the hills felt much better than running down the hills (the downhill stretches bothered my knee a bit). I remembered the Carmel Half and the hills there (nothing like this race), and remembered how I struggled with those hills. At this point I knew that this race was a total success, no matter what the time, because I was conquering the hills without much trouble, despite not training on them. This gave me a good perspective on how much stronger I really have become over the last year and a half, even when my times don’t always show it.
I took my last three shot bloks (margarita flavor again) around mile 10, and I was good to go for the rest of the race!
The nice part of this race is that the finish is on a very slight downhill, so the last quarter of a mile felt pretty good. In my training runs I tried to have my last few miles be much faster than my first few miles, and it paid off in this race. My last few miles were run progressively faster, and I felt like I had an incredibly strong finish! Another success for my training!
I crossed the finish line at 2:35, which is 5 minutes slower than the PR I set last fall. However, that course was very flat, and didn’t contain the hills that I had here. So, with that in mind, the time I had was not in any way disappointing.
We crossed and grabbed food (they had bananas, pretzels, gatorade bottles, and chips), our medals, and a heat blanket as we made our way over to gear check. We sat and stretched for a bit before walking back to the hotel. That walk actually felt fantastic. For all the hills my legs really felt great after the race! We stopped by the arch to take a few more pictures as well:
Overall I really loved the course, enjoyed the course support, and LOVED my personal experience in running. It was so fun to run with a friend from growing up, as we both got to reflect at how appalled our 9th grade selves would’ve been at our chosen form of “fun” for the day!
official race shirt- I love the design!
The time only tells part of a story, but my real story of this race is that I conquered hills, which have normally gotten me down mentally. I ran strong and had a fantastic race at the Rock’n’Roll St. Louis Half. But, like I say, to me it’s not about the time at all. With POTS, the fact that I can run really feels like a miracle, so for me, running, no matter what the time, is enough. I’m so thankful that I can run.
Congrats on a fun race! And a bit of a “destination” race for you, right?? Looks like it was a GORGEOUS day!
I ran the RnRDen 10k with a friend yesterday and it was so much fun! It was her first race and I was really happy to be able to share it with her! Running with friends is really awesome.
Thanks- it was a destination race, so that made it extra fun! How was RNRDen?
Wow, awesome job tackling all those hills. That would be a really tough course.
The course was fantastic, but was definitely the most difficult that I had run!