Broad Street Run
Last weekend, the little sis and I ran a 10-miler in Philly. After the half-marathon, this run was easy… 10 miles downhill the entire time. The only problem was the crowd: 14,000 people running down Broad Street made it difficult to get around the slow people that insist on starting up front. No matter how hard race organizers try to get people to line up according to how fast they run, everyone insists on being as close to the start line as possible. This aggravates me to no end. I digress…
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| The above picture gives you a pretty good idea of what it was like… we’re somewhere over the horizon. This is only about a half-mile into the race, but after about 3 miles, we were corralled onto the two right-hand lanes of Broad Street, so the pack never thinned out. Lauren and I spent the entire time weaving around people, cutting on and off of the sidewalk, and running around the wrong side of the road barriers. Next year we’re elbowing our way to the front. |
| Here’s a picture of Lauren and me heading into the final stretch. Lauren and I stuck together for the entire run, but with about a quarter-mile to go, she took off on her final sprint. This picture was taken about 3 seconds before she realized the finish line was about 200 yards further than where she thought it was. If only the photographer had captured the look that was on her face only moments later. It was precious. If I had to describe the thoughts most likely running through her head to best describe the face she made, it would go something like this: “This isn’t the finish line? WHAT?!?! Oh my GOD!! I’m going to DIE! KILL ME! KILL ME NOW!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, END THIS INFERNAL MISERY!!” I think you can picture it. |  |
One cool side note: on the same morning we ran down Broad Street, about 100 soldiers stationed in Iraq ran 6 loops around the Green Zone in the first ever Philadelphia-Baghdad Broad Street Run.