This morning I completed the Broadway Bridge Run in Kansas City, Missouri. I arrived to the start line with plenty of time to get stretched out and become familiar with the set up. Then, the run began. The theme of my experience was that I never knew there were that many hills in Missouri.
A brief look at the grey line on my Nike Plus Graph will show you how the elevation changed while I was one the course. You can also see how my energy responded to these changes until hitting the wall on the last half mile.
The run started and ended at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. With little overlap, the race route allowed me to see different parts of the city that I probably would never see, since I do not travel to Kansas City as much as I would like.
As I travelled down to the river and around the bridge, I felt good and maintained my pace of about 9:45-10:00. The bridge is on an incline, but I power through it, along with the hill from mile six until mile seven. I began to feel more and more tired as I began to climb the eighth mile hill, but regain some strength around mile nine and ten. From mile ten to eleven was another set of hills with a downhill from eleven to twelve. As I passed mile marker twelve, somebody that I had passed caught back up with me and I asked f she was catching up. She responded; “I was saving some for the last big hill.” That is when I became concerned.
I turned the corner at about one half mile from the finish to see a large hill in front of me. The further I ran the less my legs worked. I finally had to walk. Trying to maintain some sort of pace, I alternated between blocks, run one block, walk the next. When I finally reached the last block, another female who run with for several miles but passed, caught up and looked at me and said; “Hey you were supposed to beat us!” I said, “OK,” stepped it up, and soon turned the corner to see that I was still under two hours and fifteen minutes, which was my goal. This was enough to push me the last hundred yards into the finish line.
It was definitely a great day to run. The weather was nice and running atmosphere was nice. The hills were not so nice, but I would definitely accept the challenge again if I were ever in the area for this race again.
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Photo from RunAndShootPhoto