The weekend that blew by...

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend. This weekend was our big race. It was great! I ran the whole way and my sweet hubs stayed right by my side. Here is a bit of info about the race that I found at metrojacksonville.com, and also a bit about the conditions of the day. The wind was brutal!!!

The 31st Annual Gate River Run was held today here in Jacksonville. The Gate River Run is the USA 15k Championship and is now the largest 15k (9.3 miles) race in terms of participants. This year's participants numbered over 13,000.

15k finishers this year were privileged to a few changes from previous years. The first mile or so of this year's race ran north from the Jacksonville Fairgrounds into East Jacksonville. From there, the race course was much the same as previous years (winding into San Marco and St Nicholas and then up the Hart Bridge) until the finish. Finishers this year ran across the finish line inside of Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. Photos - Comments

Weather Conditions Two words... harsh winds. While temperatures were ideal for a fast race this morning (mid-50s), the high winds were not. Gusts exceeded 50 mph with steady winds in the 30 mph range. It was so bad at mile 3 that waves from the St Johns River were crashing against the bulkheads in San Marco and drenching runners.

They weren't kidding! Not only was I wearing some of the St. Johns River for the remainder of the run, but being up on the Hart Bridge the wind was blowing so hard that it was actually moving me (and everyone else up there) around as if we were being pushed! It was nuts! But it was a good time, and I am really proud of all of us! My final chip time was 1:46:35 (11:39 min mile) which is about standard for my pace on longer runs! It's not the fastest ever, actually it's pretty slow, but for me its good. My longest run up until this point was 8 miles, this was another 1.3 and had a big bridge in it!! So with that I will leave you with some pictures of the race, the sights and a group shot before the race. We didn't get many post race pictures because we were all FREEZING after we finished and we didn't have the best plan when it came to meeting back up, so we were all over the place trying to find each other, then when we did, we were ready to get to the car and head back home.

Before the Race

The Hart Bridge. This is how we finished our run!

My stuff