Sweat it out: Zooma Annapolis

This weekend I celebrated my 31st birthday in two parts. On Saturday, I continued my annual tradition of throwing myself fabulous birthday parties. This year's was a bit low-key compared to previous years (and a lot low-key compared to some previous years): just a handful of my favorite people hanging out and enjoying some good food and drinks. I spent the first 6 hours of Saturday cooking and produced some pretty awesome things (if I do say so myself): fudge, blueberry cobbler, peach oatmeal crumble, cookies and cream ice cream, amazing guacamole, mango salsa, and lemon-dill roasted potatoes, all of which accompanied some Boca and turkey burgers. The stars of the menu were the guac and the salsa, both of which came from the wonderful Vineyard Cookbook (http://amzn.com/1599620642) which I picked up on vacation in CA last year and highly recommend.

The party had to end rather early because part two of the celebration was the Zooma Annapolis 10K, which started at 7am this morning. Presumably, the organizers chose this time hoping to get out ahead of the heat. Well, they failed on that one. It was oppressively hot and muggy by the time I left my house at 6:15. I was drenched in sweat with sunblock running into my eyes by the time we had run out of the Navy Marine Corps stadium parking lot and I stayed that way for the entire race.

This was a big race- over 3,ooo runners, 90% of them women (Zooma is a women-focused race series which doesn't do a great job advertising the fact that its races are actually co-ed). The course was very similar to the A10, meaning that it featured quite a few hills. For me, the toughest part was the last mile and change, which were almost entirely uphill. I was wiped out by that point and I had waved goodbye to my running buddy Val, who was continuing on to complete the half-marathon (God bless her!). I thought I might throw up over the finish line- my recent boot camp class experiences have taught me that Alicia + heat + hard effort = puking. Another tricky thing about this race was that a LOT of people walked big portions of it. I felt like I was weaving past walkers and trying not to slam into people who abrubtly stopped in front of me the entire race. My time was below par for me (1:12), which I think was a combination of heat, hills, and time lost manuevering around walkers. Next year, I'll definitely start with a faster pace group just to avoid the latter problem.

I finished around 8:15am and the after-race party was already a chaotic mess. The line for water and food stretched so far that I decided to just head for the Gatorade in my car and the food at my house. The downside was that I didn't get to see my friends finish. The upside was that I impressed my family by actually making it to our weekly Sunday breakfast and church. My Dad (who doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to my running) greeted me in surprise and said "You're already done? I saw that race in the paper- it was a long way!" Thanks, Dad.

Its hard to believe that I'm going to spend the rest of this summer completing even longer runs in heat this bad and worse, but I made it through today and I guess I'll make it through that too. I have a lot of birthday treats to work off.