This past Saturday, I made Alex and Julia wake up at the crack of dawn so that they could watch me huff and puff 6.2 miles and then enjoy a day of carnival food and fun. I really don't love driving more than an hour to a race the morning of but we had some serious bowling to do the night before so that's what we ended up doing.
The race took place in Winchester, VA and the drive out there was beautiful. It really reminded me of my drives back and forth to JMU through the mountains of VA. Anyway, not many people were out on the roads at six so the drive was quick and painless. Once we got to Winchester, it was pretty easy to find some parking although we paid $10 for the day. I have heard of the Apple Blossom Festival from an old roommate in college that was from Winchester but I didn't realize the magnitude of the event. There were hundreds of chairs lining the streets along the parade route that you had to pay certain groups for the privilege of sitting there in a folding chair. Whatever, I guess it was worth it because AC Slater was the grand marshall.
The race only had race day packet pickup which had me concerned but the process was actually seamless and enjoyable. It took me five minutes to stop at one tent for my packet and another tent for my t-shirt.
Did I mention that the official colors for this festival are pink and green? Seriously, We all stood out like sore thumbs since we were not pink and green clad from head to toe. Anyway, after I got all my goodies, I walked fifty feet over to the start line. The race is fairly small so there was no worry about getting in the right corral and there was hardly any congestion once we started.
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| My favorite part was getting a good luck hug and kiss from Julia |
The course started off going downhill briefly and then turning uphill for almost the next mile. There were lots of spectators along the course but I'm pretty confident that a lot of them were just holding their seats for the parade later that day as they weren't very encouraging. I didn't love the course but I think that's because it was unusually hot and muggy and I felt like I was dying. One thing I did enjoy was that we looped by the start/finish line three different times so my own personal cheerleaders were able to see me at the beginning, middle and end of the race, which I thought was really nice.
I walked parts of the 10k because I felt like the heat was killing me and therefore, I only finished in 1:01:51. This is only an approximation as I forgot to stop my Garmin when I crossed the finish line and they haven't posted the official race results yet. Come on, it was chip timed. Shouldn't it be pretty easy just to post those?
After the race, we continued on to the fair and paid enormous amounts of money for food. I had a pretty delicious smoked turkey sandwich and topped it off with some chocolate covered bacon :)
After eating, we decided to head out of town and get back home. Our friend Tim was celebrating his 30th birthday at the House of Bounce and we didn't want to get stuck in Winchester since they were closing all the roads down for the parade.
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| Luckily, we made it in time! |
What is your favorite carnival food?
I'm turning 30 in a month and loved House of Bounce, do you have any other suggestions on how to celebrate?
