Army 10 miler- Team Holmes!

Last Sunday, team Holmes set out to run their first race as a married couple!!!!

Lets begin with our training. We set out training two months prior to the race- doing the long runs, checking off the runs on our "training schedule", when Danielle hurt her hamstring (1 week before the wedding) 1 month before the race. I tried to keep running which just lead to more pain. So I had to take a week off- which turned into two. But Jamie kept trucking, putting in those long runs! One week before the race, I ran once :( AHHH. We spent Friday and Saturday before the race at Virginia Beach for the soccer tournament, drove back late Saturday night, ate Wendy's for dinner (including a frostie), and woke up at 5:30 to get on the metro by 6:15. Double AHHH. As a former runner, this is NOT how I prepare for a race. I was nervous. I even brought my IPOD as a back up, which is against the rules, I don't like disobeying the rules...

As we ran up to the metro, we were greeted by more crazy runners riding the metro at 0 dark hundred. One guy was even stretching on the metro. I was just trying to keep myself from turning around and heading back to bed. After heading straight to the port-a-potty line, the atmosphere became contagious. There were 30,000 people running this race! There were army men everywhere and even men sky diving right at the start line. Awesome!

Finally after waiting for hour and half we were off. 500 yards into the race, I see men lining the trees.. I thought hahah that's a funny joke they can't seriously be peeing next to the pentagon. Wrong. They were. We ran around DC, seeing lots of the monuments, tons of people cheering, the miles were clicking away. My competitive spirit was kicking in. Luckily, Jamie kept me in check- hey we don't run this fast at home! We passed a few wounded warriors running without their legs- which was incredible. You couldn't complain about being tired in this race! Then we hit mile 7. Ugh. My wheels fell off and Jamie's picked up. He was feeling good. Finally around mile 9, I said please leave me. I wanted to slow down. hahah so he took off. And he did awesome! This was his first race and he did great! I finished a minute behind proud that I finished after my lack of training. Our first one done and hopefully more to come!