Race Recap: The Color Run in DC!

:: Before I begin…have you entered my Under Armour running shoe giveaway yet? You still have time! ::

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And with the conclusion of The Color Run yesterday, race #2 is logged and in the books!

I can’t believe it took me from May until now to have had a second race. Or that I’ll have another one this coming weekend, the Pumpkin Run, and then my first official half marathon, the Battleship North Carolina, in 13 days!

Now, I certainly don’t need to race every weekend. {Those of you out there that do it, more power to you AND your wallet. Seriously, how y’all afford races weekend after weekend, I just don’t know, but that’s another subject. Feel free to share your race-fund-saving-tips!} But somehow these three weekends in a row I will have ended up doing just that and it’s pretty awesome! {Again–I cannot stress how thankful I am to be working Monday through Friday now, regular business hours finally. I can do races on the weekend and not have to request time off work!! Holla!!}

Well, it’s awesome once I’ve traveled to the starting line, I’m all set to run, I’m in the process of running, sure that I’ll finish the race, and once I have finished and have my swag on. 😀 I won’t lie–the morning of, twice now, I’ve woken up thinking, “Man, I just want to keep sleeping. Can’t this race start at like, say, 11am instead?” You KNOW how I am about morning running. I kind of detest it. {Thank goodness my Pumpkin Run doesn’t start until 5pm this Saturday. Now THAT’S a time that is more Cherie-like!!!}

My sis picked up my race packet for me the day before. So happily, that was already done and taken care of and we didn’t have to wake up even earlier to go get it. GREAT SWAG!!

As much as I don’t like getting up early to run, it was crazy beautiful on the National Harbor, where the race was held. {Technically just outside of DC, but close enough to generalize it and call it DC like the organizers did. So go along with me here.} The sun was just rising and glistening on the water. GORGEOUS! My sister drove us {it was only about 20 minutes from her house so I made a quick weekend road trip up to DC to stay with her} so I was able to look around and take in all the beauty while she was navigating.

I was excited to run with her as this was her first 5K!  Originally I was going to plan on running a 5K PR to better my time from the first one in May. But once I realized I was going to want to stop and take pictures of all that was going on around me, and I wanted to slow it down to her speed to stay with her, any sort of time records went out the window! That was kind of nice actually because it took all types of “racing” pressure off me and I was just enjoying the run and the experience!

The race began at 9am, but we lined up early so we could be in the first wave of people to go through. I LOVED seeing everyone’s creative white outfits! My note to self: I need to jazz it up for the rest of my races!

Once we were off it was pretty tight. A little hard to move around everyone, but then it spaced out. It was super cool to be running on the highway! Once we passed this portion of the race is when I really couldn’t contain myself and just wanted to take pictures of everything!

My sister was doing the same, so she was able to get some “action” shots of me. I realized long ago that I didn’t have any pictures of me running and this blog is called Cherie Runs This. Haa! And I say “action” in quotes because again, we were going too slowly at times to call these “running” pictures! But you get the gist.

The yellow was one of my favorite colors to run through! {Steelers fanatic, DUH!}

This view near the end of the race was beautiful to me! Though I don’t swim, or really even like to get IN the water, I love to look at it!

And here’s the finish! My Nike+ GPS clocked it at 2.8 miles…I swear I started my timekeeping as soon as I crossed the start. Hmm…odd! Don’t know if the organizers noticed that or not, but whatevs. So it was almost a 5K! Oh, and the time: 41:31. Again, we strolled along a lot, haha!! But since I know I can do it faster, I don’t even care. AND–while I was running I felt fantastic! Like I could run and run for miles without stopping. This DEFINITELY gave me the confidence I need to do my half mary on the 4th of November!!

After the race, I did what I do best:

Shop. Haha, my sis caught me all digging into my SpiBelt for my dough. The whole time I was running all I kept talking about was NEEDING to pick up a pair of yellow The Color Run knee-highs that I saw somebody wearing.

So I got the knee-highs AND an awesome hoodie and cute key chain. Couldn’t resist!

My sis also sprung for me to get my nails done on this visit–since I have an officey job now, she thought I should have pretty nails. 😉 I never get my nails done, but I wasn’t going to argue!

It was a great weekend and a great race! Two showers later I’m still finding bits of color in places I didn’t even know the color could go, but it creates lasting memories, haha. {Sunglasses and a bandana and clothes you don’t mind ruining are highly recommended!} I’m SO glad I ran it and very proud of my sister for finishing her first 5K! On to the next one!

Did you run The Color Run before? How’d it go?

• Posted in: clothing ♦ giveaways ♦ health & wellness ♦ pictures ♦ product reviews ♦ running ♦ Uncategorized
• Tagged: The Color Run, The Color Run DC, The Color Run hoodie, The Color Run race recap, The Color Run race swag, The Color Run review, The National Harbor DC