Another Bloomsday under my belt. This is the first year I was even remotely trained, though my running in the few weeks prior to the race were less than stellar. A shoulder injury has thrown all of my training into a general funk that’s been hard to get out of. There were nearly 46,000 runners this year, an increase over last year and it showed. I started near the back of the yellow group, something I won’t be doing again. There were entirely too many slow runners in front of me. How they got in the yellow group I’ll never know, but a lot of them were walking by the first mile. I got to the starting area a little late and was waiting in line for the honey bucket when the gun went off. Oh well. I know there is a line of them at mile 2. The start was horrendous. The road was simply not wide enough to accomodate that many people. I made my way to the edge of the road and was running through people’s yards and over bushes, just so I wouldn’t have to be in the road where you couldn’t go faster than a 10:00 pace. I used the bathroom at mile 2. This is the first time I’ve ever had to stop during a race. I felt somewhat ashamed, but felt so much better afterwards, totally worth it. The crowd was so thick and slow that I couldn’t run in a straight line at a decent pace until around the third mile. Even though I wasn’t going as fast as I was able to I wasn’t weaving, starting, or stopping as much. It wouldn’t be until mile 5 or so that I could get enough clear road to go anything under 7:00 pace. I finished with a time of 53:27, my best time yet. Without the bathroom break it would be 52:00. I could do much better given a bit more space, but this is Bloomsday and that’s part of the experience.
Bloomsday 2009
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