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enell, enell ambassador, enell sports bras, fitness, half marathon, healthy living, nike, nikeplus, race recap, race review, running, sparkle athletic, team enell, teamsparkle, weightloss, zooma, zooma annapolis
So its been a few weeks since I completed the Zooma Annapolis Half Marathon which was my first official race as an Enell Ambassador. I am so grateful to Enell for providing me entry to this race along with an awesome Enell Sports Bra and shirt. If it was not for Enell, this entire race would have had me even more upset than I was.
I waited a couple weeks to write this review because I was way too angry after this race to recap it right away, and while I want to focus on the good things, there are a few negatives that I just cannot bring myself to brush aside even after sitting on it for two weeks. With that said, lets get underway with the recap!
I love when a half marathon is on a Saturday morning because I have the rest of the weekend to recover, so I was excited about Zooma Annapolis being on a Saturday. Friday after work I headed over to the Loews Annapolis Hotel for packet pick up. We had to pay $5.00 for parking which I thought was super lame for the entire 10 minutes I spent inside the hotel, but it is what it is I suppose. I went inside to the expo, which wasn’t much of an expo at all and picked up my packet which include a t-shirt, my bib, a keychain that said “RUN” on it and a couple of samples of protein shake mix and whatnot. I was a little perplexed because during registration they asked for not only your shirt size, but also sock size, so I guess I assumed there would be socks in the packet. I can’t remember if I read that anywhere or if I just assumed, but either way, there were no socks.
Since it was supposed to be super humid and gross on Saturday, Zooma sent out an e-mail letting everyone know that they could switch from the Half Marathon to the 10k and remind everyone to take it nice and easy and not strive for a PR because the weather would be so horrible. I didn’t have any interest in switching but I was asked again at the expo if I was sure I wanted to do the half marathon. The course had a time limit of 3.5 hours and I completed nearly the exact same course back in November in 2:53 so I figured I’d just dial it back a bit and aim for a finish time between 3:00-3:15. Besides, the medal they advertised on their website for the 5k and 10k wasn’t nearly as cute as the one for the half marathon.
Since Tim lives in Annapolis I made plans to stay with him for the weekend and after the expo headed to the grocery store to pick up some supplies for dinner and then headed to Tim’s place. We grilled chicken sausage and veggies and had a quiet evening with an early bedtime.
I woke up around 5:30 and got up and dressed, and coated my entire body in body glide because it was going to be that kind of day. Tim woke up and threw on some clothes while I munched on a plain bagel and downed some water then drove me over to the Navy-Marine Corps Stadium where the start line was and dropped me off. It was about 6:30 now, a half hour away from race start time. I hit the port-a-potty and wandered over to the starting chute. It was super humid and I felt sweaty just standing there but I knew with a slow and steady pace I could knock out this 13.1 without a problem.
I found it odd that for a race with a 3.5 hour time limit the anticipated pace signs only went up to 12 minutes/mile but shrugged it off and lined up in the back of the chute. I was also noticing that most of the people around me were wearing 5k and 10k bibs and heard a lot of chatter from women who had dropped out of the half marathon. I still wasn’t worried. 3.5 hours was plenty of time for me, even if I finished last, I honestly didn’t care.
The race started promptly at 7am and we were off. For the first mile and a half we were running with the 5k and 10kers, but the 5kers quickly dropped off and headed back to the stadium for their finish. The crowd thinned a little, but there were a lot of women running the 10k around me and would stay with us until about mile 5 I think as we ran around downtown Annapolis. For the first five miles I was maintaining between 13:15 and 13:30 pace, then the stupid bridge killed me, but I expected it.
Downtown AnnapolisWhy do the bridges always look so much flatter in pictures?
I hit the halfway point at almost exactly 1.5 hours so I figured I’d be closer to the 3 hour mark than 3:15 for finishing and texted Tim to let him know. I also let him know how awesome I would think he was if he brought me a nice cold Coke to the finish line.
I knew the area on the other side of the bridge was going to be non-stop hills and misery, and I backed off on my pace a lot. It was REALLY humid and when the sun started to peak out of the clouds it was getting hot. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I knew I would finish.
After the 10k people left us, the course was really empty. I only counted about two dozen people behind me at an out and back point, but no worries. I saw the last person on the course was about 1.5-2 miles behind me and a police car following behind her, so I knew I was just fine on time.
At an out and back section a couple ladies dressed in red white and blue behind me yelled that they loved my Enell shirt.
All smiles after getting complimented on my shirt.
Then it was time to cross that awful bridge again. When I got over the bridge a volunteer yelled to me “I LOVE ENELL TOO!” It made me proud to be repping them.
You have to selfie from the top of the bridge.
Not long after I crossed the bridge, around 11.5 miles, I was 2:45 into the race, and that cop car that had been behind the last woman came up alongside of me and informed me that the course would now be opened to traffic. WHAT?! This is a 3.5 hour course, and I’m less than two miles from the finish line with 45 minutes left on the clock, how is that even possible?
One of the red white and blue women came running up from behind and asked me if I was mad too, and I said yes, and she yelled back to her friend to say I was surprised by this as well. We rounded a corner and volunteers were REMOVING THE COURSE SIGNAGE and packing things up. I shouted to one of them, I thought we had 3.5 hours! And he said, you do, you’re fine, just move to the sidewalk.
FINE? No, that’s not fine or having 3.5 hours. That’s having 2:45. In the heat and humidity. When they told us not to try to push ourselves. And now there was a car coming in my direction, so I went to hop onto the sidewalk and out of the way.
And I went down hard, just before what I assume to be the mile 12 marker, but I can’t be entirely sure because they had taken it down.
I slammed my ribs into the curb. Ripped open my left elbow and both my hands on the sidewalk. Bruised and scraped my knees. I was bleeding pretty badly, not that there were any first aid tents on the course. And even if there had been, they would have been taken away by then.
It’s hard to take a picture of your own elbow.
The red white and blue ladies stopped to help me up and shouted to the guy that told us to get on the sidewalk that I needed first aid, but I refused it, got up and we kept moving. One of them gave me a hanky to wrap around my elbow. They said they would help me clean out my wounds at the next water stop because I had a lot of grass and dirt on me. But the next water station was already packed in and we weren’t even to three hours yet.
One of the ladies that stopped to help and the cars on the course!
Neither of them were super familiar with Annapolis. I’m not either, but we managed to find our way back to the stadium on the busy city streets. We had to dodge cars in the road, wait for traffic lights, and battle bicycles on the sidewalks. It was absolutely ridiculous. If we had exceeded the 3.5 hour time limit I would understand, but we weren’t even close to it. And now I was bleeding and hurt because I had been forced onto the sidewalk before I should have been.
I’m so thankful that those women stuck close-by and were there to help me up and give me something to wipe up with. Runners are the best.
I hobbled into the finish line and the race announcer encouraged me to keep going. I lifted my bloody hanky and she said “That’s what we do, we fall down and we get back up.”
I got my half marathon medal (which I would later find out from Instagram that the 10k finishers got the same medal) and immediately squeezed my way through the barricades that made up the chute to the first aid tent and got cleaned up and bandaged and hobbled over to Tim’s jeep for a ride home and my Coke, so I’m not sure how the after party was for this event or what kind of refreshments they had or what sorts of vendors were at the ‘after party.’
Putting on a happy face for Instagram.
My official finish time was 3:15:23 and that was after falling down, getting hurt, battling traffic and waiting for lights. Even with those obstacles I still finished well before the course limit so there was really no reason for me to have to deal with those things on course. I finished 566 out of 580 in the half marathon, so there were still other women behind me. This is by far the SMALLEST half marathon I’ve ever completed, but just because there weren’t many of us left out on the course at 2 hours and 45 minutes (looking at the results approximately 118 women finished slower than 2:45) doesn’t mean we didn’t deserve to be safe.
I don’t know if the race directors know what happened, but if they were aware of the roads opening early, they should have informed us ahead of time. If I was told it would be a 2:45 time limit, I would have dropped to the 10k in a heartbeat, because I know I’m not going to hit that kind of time in this kind of weather with the training runs I had leading up to this race. Yes, I run on roads with cars during training runs, but roads that I am familiar with, and roads with not as much traffic as the city streets of Annapolis have. This was not safe, and weeks later I still have the scabs/scars and messed up Nike+ watch to prove it, but luckily they’re not broken bones or worse.
Once again, I want to reiterate that I am so so grateful to Enell for providing me with this race entry and gear, but I also want other back of the pack runners to know that maybe a Zooma race isn’t the best choice. I know I will never do one again.