The Army 10 Miler

On Sunday, the Metro opened a couple of hours early, a few streets in DC were completely closed, and about 20,000 people flocked to the Pentagon for the Army 10 Miler, which is one of the most popular races in the DC area (another being the Marine Corps Marathon; both races fill up within three days of registration opening).

I met up with a couple of other interns, as well as the husbands of a couple of interns, at the Forest Glen metro stop at 6am Sunday morning (when the Metro opened), to begin our journey to the Pentagon stop. We ended up arriving a little after 7, which was almost an hour before the race began (although closer to an hour and a half to when we actually crossed the start line). I ran with Beth and Emily, an orthopedic surgery intern and general surgery intern, respectively, for the first six or so miles, before I lost them at a water stop around the sixth mile marker.

With my dramatically bad performance at the half marathon a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take it fairly easy for the last four miles, which meant that I didn't get that great of a time (1:38 or so; a bit faster than 10 minutes/mile), but I was still standing at the finish line, which was the ultimate goal. Of the five of us, though, nobody ended up with that great of a time, so I didn't feel so bad (Beth and Emily ended up coming in only a few minutes ahead of me). After crossing the finish line, we got our coins (above), and then it was off to our meeting place, the Pentagon Metro sign, which worked out pretty well. While we were waiting for the menfolk to wander up(they must have been spending a lot of time in the food tents), I saw someone in an Ohio State shirt, so we chatted for a few minutes. Turns out, he's a sports medicine physician at Nationwide Children's Hospital, so that was pretty interesting.

Anyway, it was another long Metro ride back to our cars (by the way, cramming a bunch of sweaty, stinky people into Metro cars is not pleasant), and then we went our separate ways to go home and clean up before heading out to breakfast (which we ate at 1 pm...). Then I spent most of the afternoon taking a nap. All in all, a pretty good day. Emily decided that we should do it every year of residency. I agree.