Late Friday evening I received a Facebook post from one of our Hobe Sound Natives running mates, she asked if anyone was interested in running this race with her. Of course, this note got the juices flowing, as I had seen this race advertised for weeks and dismissed it for some reason. I asked my main running partner in crime what his thoughts were. We planned on running a 10K from the house to the beach, so why not run a 10K with our friend. Besides, it sounded like fun and I knew so other folks who were running this race as well. I posted back we would run it and meet her bright and early at six am to register and pick up our race bibs.
I was excited and had a tough time falling asleep, I tossed and turned for a few hours until I cleared my mind like I do every night before a run. The alarm blared at 4:45 am, I turned it off and rolled out of bed in anticipation of an energizing run. I’ve never just showed up at an event and registered that morning so I needed to get there a bit early to collect our goodies. I spotted our friend she waved as we crossed the street. The darkness at 6 am made it challenging to write out our registration card. The lights at the booth went in and out, but mission accomplished within a few minutes we were registered, t-shirt and goodie bag in hand. We headed back to the car to put our swag away, and pin our race bibs on.
The wait time until the gun went off was about 40 minutes, so we walked around, chatted with other runners, and took a selfie in front of the finish line. Then the pre-race butterflies flew in formation, no matter if it’s a 5K, 10k, or half marathon the butterflies are with me. The feeling of pre-race is like no other feeling, it’s like a magic where the smiles on all are broad and wide. The runners were greeted by Santa in an ambulance at the start line, not that anyone wanted to get picked up by Santa in an ambulance, his presence gave more cheer than usual as the gun went off and so were the runners.
I’ve run Sewalls point events for the past several years at the 5k level. This was my first year running a 10K and it’s the first time the race management added a 10k. I wasn’t quite sure what the course was like, but if I know Sewalls Point it would be beautiful. The scenic homes along the intercostal is breathtaking. The course was flat the first mile and a half until we reached “High Point” a housing development within Sewalls Point, and it then got dicey. Once we reached High Point the rolling hills started and we then zig zagged from one street with hills to another until we met up with the 5K course (which was about 3.5 miles).
My friend and I, we weren’t prepared for the ups, downs and zig zags through this course and the weather was more like summer instead of December. It seemed long and daunting, we didn’t see a water stop until around mile 3, which is unusual, as most races water stops are spaced apart by 1.5 miles. I’m glad I took my own water. Once we rounded that last turn onto the main road we could hear the excitement of the finish line and that got us moving again. This race for me was more of a casual Saturday morning run at a comfortable high 12/ low 13-minute mile. I was glad to be out running even though when I crossed the finish line they ran out of medals. Again, today wasn’t about the medal it was more about moving. I was proud of my husband won second place in his age group and my friend won third place in her age group. All in all, it was a festive and fun run. Sewalls Point rocks.