Around the Crown 10k Recap

I love running in Charlotte. It's a beautiful city, the races are always filled with my running friends, and it's challenging. Charlotte is super hilly, y'all. The races also have a time limit that pushes me. Coaching the new half marathoners usually has me running at between a 15-16 minute mile on the regular, so I don't always know hoe I will run on my own. 

The race started at 7:04 (It's a Charlotte area code) and my club was meeting at 6:30, so we were up at 5, and headed to Susanna's for a 6:00 pickup. 

It was dark. I adore Charlotte in the dark, everything is always lit up and beautiful!

After the group photo (not everyone made it, we had over 30 runners in the race!) it was time to hit the bathrooms. No porta-potties at this race, we got to use the real bathrooms in the baseball stadium. Score! I also got to see some of my peeps!

Once we finished up there, it was time to line up. We were worried about Cary, but she showed up in time for a selfie before the start.

The race began at 7:04, as promised, and we started about 5 minutes later. There were about 5000 runners, and we were in the back. We stuck to our 90/60 run walk, and hit the streets of Charlotte. Everyone was so excited to run on 277 with no cars! They shut down the highway for the first hour of the race (there were conflicting reports of how long they would really have it shut down, but the time limit was a 13:45 pace, and we were not taking chances!)

There were some shenanigans, of course. Our first two miles were around 13:15 so we were feeling comfy and a little silly...

The views were incredible!

Red Ventures was set up at the "5.2 mile mark". I put this in quotes because somewhere before mile 5, the course was short, so it was really mile 5.

And then we were back at Panther's Stadium, making that final turn towards the finish line. 

My goal was to finish. That was really it. It was a fun race, and I ran it with my friends, and that was enough for me.

The time limit was 13:45 and I nailed it. It was my fastest 5K since 2013, although that isn't hard to do since most of them happened in Disney! I did cut 5 minutes off of my April 10k, and that .2 would not have taken me 5 minutes so I am pretty excited about that! 

I have run hundreds of races, and this race was put together so well. There were reusable cups on the clourse and water bottles at the end, no glitches at all, other than the short course, and we had a blast! 

Oh, and afterwards, I ate all the food. All of it, steadily, throughout the day.

It was a great day! I started with a race, and ended brewery hopping to celebrate a friend's birthday, and I cannot wait to run this race again in 2020!