Absolutely! I'm in the Pink Corral.Hey are you still running Broad St on Sunday?
OK! I'm in yellow. I have no idea what order those corrals are in. I ran this race a few years ago and I just remember it was a looooong wait for my corral to be released that time. Whatever color that was. Prepare for a bunch of waiting around. My only advice will be, if you are taking Septa to the start (I am), leave early. Everybody with a bib can ride Septa for free to the start and it is mobbed. Parking is near the first stop going south to north so the trains basically fill up at that first stop. Each train goes express and doesn't stop anymore until Olney or whatever the stop at the race start is, once it gets full enough. I'm staying near City Hall so I'll try to cram myself in at the Walnut/Locust stop.Absolutely! I'm in the Pink Corral.
Yellow is just before pink I think. The waiting for a start never thrills me but it's the norm with large races. I am fortunate enough that my local tri club is providing a bus to the start so I just have to wake up early and drive to the bus pickup point. The harder part for me will be how I want to get back home since I don't see myself wanting to ride a bus or Septa anywhere in my race clothes. It may actually be one of the first times I use bag check.OK! I'm in yellow. I have no idea what order those corrals are in. I ran this race a few years ago and I just remember it was a looooong wait for my corral to be released that time. Whatever color that was. Prepare for a bunch of waiting around. My only advice will be, if you are taking Septa to the start (I am), leave early. Everybody with a bib can ride Septa for free to the start and it is mobbed. Parking is near the first stop going south to north so the trains basically fill up at that first stop. Each train goes express and doesn't stop anymore until Olney or whatever the stop at the race start is, once it gets full enough. I'm staying near City Hall so I'll try to cram myself in at the Walnut/Locust stop.
I love this race. The weather looks like it will be nice so you should have a great time. Crowd support is wonderful, City Hall is beautiful IMO. My experience was that I could run my own speed the whole way because, even though there are a lot of people, it's a very wide course (they don't call it Broad Street for nothin' lol). If you want to do a mini meetup before the race, as I said, I should be there early so you can DM me.
Great race report! I didn’t have cell service at the start or finish of the race either so I wouldn’t have gotten your message even if you did send it. Also I accidentally got in the wrong corral because I entered at the yellow flags and walked forward (in the runDisney style) instead of back like you were supposed to. There were so many yellow bibs in the corral I was in, I didn’t even notice I was in the wrong place. Really disorganized.So I've finally had time to do my Broad Street write up. I woke up at 5:00ish? This was because I was driving south to where my tri club met up to take the bus into the city. The more I think about this, the more I think it might have been counter productive to my sleep since I could have just woken up later and gone straight to the city. The bus ride was fine. Someone gave me a Swedish fish which was delicious. The thing about using the tri club bus was that they claimed it would drop us right at the start. I was promised this repeatedly by my cousin who has run Broad Street before. She said it was so convenient.
They parked a few blocks from the start. Was it convenient? Overall yes. It wasn't what I was promised though. It was kind of like walking from the buses when doing a runDisney race. It's not terribly far, in fact it's an acceptable warm up but Disney doesn't promise to drop you right at the start. There was a school field with port-a-potties. Did I go? Of course not. My biggest fear with waking up early to go to a race is that I will have to use a bathroom during said race (hello Magic Kingdom) because my body won't have time to sort itself out before hand. I had been prepping my body for this race for a few days so I was hoping I didn't run into this issue. Also they were threatening to shut to doors to the field in 10 minutes to get everyone to the start and no way was I willing to watch that mess happen.
Getting to corrals was a trial because of where the bus parked. People in faster corrals were pushing forward to get to their corral while people in the slower corrals were pushing back. I don't know how to make this better with 40k people. It was just a hot mess. My cousin said that they never push back to their corral because there is no way to get there. She is tiny so for her this may be true. She's more likely to break a bone getting swept through the crowd. That being said, she also would have run the risk of being trampled if she didn't corral correctly. That's none of my business though. In a race I've never run before I wanted to be a rule follower even if no one else was. So I just pushed through to my corral. The PINK CORRAL. The pink corral is the last corral and I am definitely in there. If you don't submit a sub 1:50 10 miler you would be there too. It's a big corral with everyone from people who look like regular runners to people who are definitely going to be chafed everywhere based on their clothing choice.
At this point I'm in my corral and thought, since I'm at the front of it and can easily hop back onto the sidewalk to try to see @SheHulk in the yellow corral that would be my goal. I forgot that 40k people wrecks havoc on my cell phone service. I never got logged into Disboards. That also meant that even once the race started I had 45 minutes to kill before my corral ended up starting. This btw is faster than previous years. At the start there was a guy with a Westboro Baptist Church style sign that said 'Jesus or He-double-hockeysticks-fire'. He had a megaphone but I couldn't hear what he was saying. Some people closer could since they started chanting that he was a particular orifice on one's rear end to put it in a more Disney friendly term.
Soon we were off and I began to feel that the downhill of broad street was a bit of a lie. I mean, I knew it wasn't majorly downhill for the first part but I didn't realize how many small up-hills there were. I stayed strong focused on settling into my pace while taking in the sights around me. The crowd support was amazing. Lots of people were out and cheering. There were some great signs and overall it was an enjoyable atmosphere. The first few miles went quickly as they are known to do and I was well settled into my pace (12:04, 11:56, 12:02, 12:04, 12:00). After the first mile city hall is just about always visible so it's great to watch it get closer and closer as you run. I saw the Temple Band out playing and they were great. A sign that said 'This run is way easier than dating' which was hilarious. Really the only downside at this point was the water stations. Lots of people stopping so I usually tried to run further down so I could grab and drink while I ran but even then there were some bottle necks as a lot of people wanted to walk through the water station.
Once I got to city hall things fell apart. I had both GPS and GLONASS on because I was hoping the slight increase in accuracy of using both would be enough to get through the tall buildings on this part of the course. It was not. I apparently ran an extra .2 miles somewhere without knowing it (at least according to my watch) which means it thinks miles 6-7 were my fastest at 11:22 and 11:41. This is not true. They were my slowest because I was using my watch for my pace. When I run this fast blind I usually slow down to 12:15 or 12:30 which is what happened according to the official results. By the time I was able to get back to knowing my pace by watching the race clocks I had lost at least a minute. According to the official results I was sitting at 12:02-12:03 between miles 1-5 and ended up at a 12:31 pace between 5 and 7.
I tried to make up some of that time once I realized but I wasn't confident I would get all of it. In fact, while I definitely upped my pace again, I was still slower than I had trained for. I attribute some of this to the amount of weaving that occurred towards the end as we seemed to bottle neck with a ton of people who lost steam just walking. It was unlike any race I had seen or been in. Even the finish line photo of me shows almost everyone walking across the finish line. I did not PR and in fact was at 2:01:41 which is less than a full minute above my PR. I'm disappointed that I didn't get it on the one hand and I think if I had been away less and trained harder I may have but I also think I could have pulled it out if I had my GPS or I didn't have to weave at the end. Every race is a bunch of small decisions and surely there are some that might have gotten me that PR but there's always another race. I have three 5ks to finish the spring season and maybe I can PR one of them.
Overall, while the race was not everything I had hoped it was a great crowd and experience. That being said, after the half mile walk back from the Navy Yard where we crossed the finish to the stadiums where the bus (and people's cars and public transportation) and then the ride back home I am pretty confident that having experienced it Broad Street would not be my first choice in 10 milers next year. This mostly relates to my love of sleeping and the fact that no other 10 miler is quite as much of a trial just to get to and from. For those who haven't done it and want a great high energy race environment I can't help but recommend this race to try at least once.
It's all right. The 10 Miler is my favorite distance. I wish more places had it as a distance. I would love to do more 10 milers. I'm lucky enough that there are a few spring and a few fall ones even if some happen the same weekend it provides options.Sounds like a huge race with some challenges. Sorry you missed the PR, but sure sounds like a solid effort and outcome for you. I wish we had some 10-milers around here since I think I would really like that race distance, but they are rare to find here.
Congrats on your PR!Great race report! I didn’t have cell service at the start or finish of the race either so I wouldn’t have gotten your message even if you did send it. Also I accidentally got in the wrong corral because I entered at the yellow flags and walked forward (in the runDisney style) instead of back like you were supposed to. There were so many yellow bibs in the corral I was in, I didn’t even notice I was in the wrong place. Really disorganized.
I still like this race, warts and all. Definitely a mix of regular runners, general fitness folks, and race novices. I PRed but only because the last time I ran a 10 miler was maybe 3-4 years ago, when I was 20 lbs or so heavier. You came close to a PR even with training issues and weaving. That’s a success in my book.
For this coming week I realized I signed up to give blood on Tuesday and I am busy Wednesday night which means my initially plan to run on Wednesday morning might not be doable since it will be within the 24 hours where I shouldn't be doing heavy exercise after giving blood. I'm wondering if there's a way to shift things around and still get all the runs for the coming week in?