Rock n' Roll Philly Recap

My quest to run twice as many half marathons in 2017 as a I did in 2016 was a success! I can’t quite believe I did it, but Rock n’ Roll Philly marked my 4^th half marathon of 2017. I still have one more on my schedule, but I am over the moon happy to have accomplished this huge goal! Two years ago I would have laughed in your face at the thought of running 4 half marathons in a year and here I am planning on running a 5^th in just a months time.

I started off the weekend driving down to Philly on Friday morning to spend the weekend with my friend, Sam. We were having a brilliant weekend and had planned to get into the city early on Saturday in order to get to the expo and then maybe check out a museum. Perfect plan, yes?

Well…we were on our way when we were rear-ended at a stop light. Not the perfect thing to happen the day before a race, but we were okay. It could have turned out a lot worse than it was. Thankfully no one was hurt and we walked away with just some soreness.

We eventually made it to the expo and got a chance to walk around and check out all of the exhibitors. I always love walking around expos and feeling the energy of the crowd. To be quite honest, I was a little disappointed this time around. I don’t know if it was because we got there a little later on the 2^nd day or if it’s because there just wasn’t that many booths compared to previous years. Either way the expo was a little tame compared to other Rock n’ Roll events, but it served its purpose. We got our packets and shirts so I was happy.

Last year we made our way down to the starting corrals about an hour+ prior to the race start. That, coupled with the fact that we didn’t actually cross the starting line until an hour after the race officially started led to reallllllly tired legs.

This year Sam and I decided to sleep in a bit and leave later than last year. We got to the starting corrals in time to see Galen Rupp and Jordan Hasay warming up which got me so excited! We were about to share a course with some amazing runners!

We got to our corral as the front 3 were starting and slowly shuffled to the front. On our way up we ran into Meredith (@scootadoot) and I was SO excited to finally meet her in person! I love meeting running friends IRL.

After about 25-30 minutes of a slow shuffle, we were off! Since we were both a little sore from the accident the day before, we decided to take it a little slower than we wanted to. It was rather humid, but cloudy and breezy which was quite nice compared to last year when it was like running through soup. We mostly stuck to a run/walk method in order to save our legs and spent the miles chatting and picking out cute running tights that we wanted.

There was a ton to see running through the streets of Philly! I absolutely loved all of the crowd support, especially the pug (and his owner) that was giving high-fives around mile 3! That was a definite pick me up! And I can’t forget the Eagles Drumline at the top of the hill at mile 4. I love drumlins and was seriously tempted to just hang out with them for the rest of the day. But alas, there was a race to get on with.

Miles 5-9 were a bit of a boring blur along the river. It’s a very scenic route, but it’s just SO long. It feels like we’re never going to get to the bridge to cross to the over side of the river.

We finally made it just before mile 9 (complete with a sweet DJ playing some Fresh Prince of Bel Aire!) and then we were in the home stretch! This was probably my favorite part of the race. By this point people were tired, but everyone was cheering for one another and just willing each other to keep going and push to the finish. I absolutely love the running community and those last 4 miles were the perfect example of how awesome everyone is.

We pushed to the finish (after passing my favorite Brooks blowup guy) and got our sweet medal. It’s HUGE! And Heavy. We both got a best course time by 5 minutes, which I would say is an achievement given the events leading up to the race.

Overall, I had SO much fun running Rock n’ Roll Philly. I love these races, I love the running community, and I am so glad to have met a ton of running friends in real life. I can’t wait to run Brooklyn in just a month!

Did you run this weekend? What was your favorite part of your race?