Opelika

It's my first day back in the office. Incidentally, it is also the first day my feet don't feel as if they are engulfed in flames. Yes, I finished the 10-mile foot race that I alluded to a couple weeks ago, a race that I finished in an hour and 34 minutes, only to be whisked off to Atlanta that same afternoon so I could drive another hour and 45 minutes to Auburn, Alabama. So there's two big steps I took in one day - running an entire 10 miles, and visiting Alabama for the first time.

I'll get into the Army Ten-Miler, or ATM as it's colloquially known. Not much of a story here, really, besides the fact that I finished it, with a sub-10 minute/mile pace (9:25 specifically). The weather was very brisk that morning, perfect conditions for me to avoid that "I hate life" and "why am I doing this" feeling I always encounter when it's just sweltering hot.

Before the race, I met up with some friends at the Lockheed Martin 'Hooah' tent, where I managed to snag a free moisture-wicking running shirt from The Company (as it's colloquially known within the turnstiles). The hoopla within the starting area was a mix of electricity, anxiety, and confusion. For some folks, 10 miles was just a training exercise for a marathon, and for others, like myself, it was the marathon.

A cannon went off and the race started at 8 o'clock, yet I was still standing still. There was two heats, and I signed up for the slower paced one, which was scheduled to take flight 10 minutes after the faster pack. So 8:10 rolled around, and I was officially punching in my timecard.

The race takes you around the southern portion of the city, with the 6.5 mile mark at the Capitol, and with it starting and ending at the Pentagon, in Alexandria. Running takes place in the streets, and on major highways, when bridges are invovled. Without giving the mile-by-mile rundown, here's some random details about the race:

1) There's 2 bathroom options during the race - port-o-potties or trees along the Potomac. I ran past many port-o-potties with lines formed behind them. I opted to empty my bladder well after the race was over, as I didn't want to waste precious race time.

2) Water station management is a real art. You need to decide how much you need/want to drink, since excess will make you want to hit the bathroom, and dehydration is not much of an alternative either. Something that I need to work on is drinking while running, as I did find myself nearly choking to death after a misaligned paper cup splashed a decent amount of Gatorade through my nasal cavity. As an aside, the water station areas always look like a scene out of Bourbon Street, where there's trash and wetness on the ground everywhere you look.

3) The post-race food offerings were plentiful, albeit somewhat low quality. The bagels, muffins, and cookies were pre-packaged, each flavor collectively sitting in their respective shipping boxes to be ravaged by exhausted runners. The only thing fresh was the bananas, probably trucked in by the thousands a few days prior to the race. Bascially the food tent looked like as if vending machines were in flea market format. Regardless, I ate about three of everything.

It wasn't even 11 o'clock in the morning and my body wanted go back to bed. But the day was far from over, as I had a 4pm flight to catch, plus the drive from Georgia to Alabama. Not to mention spending the following two days in the Opelika-Auburn area. I'm exhausted.