Gate River Run 2010

My 5th running of the Gate River Run was a success.  Chuck and I had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed our tradition of running the best run of the year in Jacksonville FL.

We headed out of town on Friday morning and got to the race expo around lunch time.  We picked up our packets, and 10 of our friends packets.  We walked around the expo for about 2 hours then went to the hotel to check into our room.

The hotel was very nice, the Embassy Suites on Baymeadows.  After unpacking and going through our expo goodies we met up with a few friends, Mom, and her friend E.  Lunch at Wild Wings was great.  So maybe beer and spicy food wasn't the best idea for a "night before a race" meal.  Oh well, I had fun anyway. 

Friday night was early to bed.  I laid down at 9:15, and suprisingly fell almost immediately to sleep.  Me... who usually has insomina for no reason at all.  5:00 AM came early and I was up, in the shower, dressed, ate my bagel with peanut butter and was ready to go by 6:30.  We ended up leaving later than I wanted.  Which resulted in heavy traffic coming into the downtown area.  On the way to the race I realized after my peparation I still managed to forget my Garmin.  Luckily Mom let me borrow hers.  I was such a grouchy butt on the way to the race.  I'm always grumpy on race morning.

Once we got to the stadium and parked, we visited the porta-potties.  Then found our corral section to line up in.  We waited for about 30 minutes.  Then it was RACE time!

The entire 15K was as enjoyable as it has been every year I have run it.  We had no expectations of running a fast time, we just wanted to do it and enjoy the day.  We finished in just a few seconds over 1 hour 30 minutes.  This was a few seconds slower than last year, but who's counting?

The race has a great beer trailer, all of us enjoyed the refreshments.  Once we all got our fill, back to the hotel to get cleaned up.  Lunch on Saturday was at the Seven Bridges, a nice restaurant with a micro brewery.  I tried the brown ale, had fettucini with parmesan shrimp.  Then for dessert Chuck and I sampled the dessert tri.  Oh Yum.  The bread pudding was amazing!

Once we were full from lunch we all headed back to the hotel to rest up a bit.  The hotel has a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 that includes free drinks.  We were all there to enjoy the "spirits"!  After that was over we wandered over to the Omaha Steak restaurant for dinner.  I wasn't hungry, so I just had a potatoe. 

We were all full, happy, and tired, so we all went to our rooms to get a good night sleep.  8:00 AM to rise Sunday morning, and go out for a windy recovery run down Baymeadows.  We got in 3 miles at a slow pace, just to stretch out the muscles and get some blood pumping.  For breakfast we enjoyed the hotel's complimentary hot breakfast.  After filling up, we showered, packed and headed to the Jacksonville Landing to say goodbye to our mini vacation spot.  We had smoothies and shopped for about an hour before heading back to Georiga.

The trip home was uneventful.  (That's good right?)  And back to work Monday morning.

This week is my last week on Phase 2 of my training.  Last night was my speed workout, which went well.  I will either start my Tempo runs this week or next week.  I'll wait and see how I feel.