14th Coca-Cola Women's 10K

This past weekend, my training was finally put to the test. I ran a 10K in Budapest.

A friend from the school, Hannah, and I registered to run this race together. Sunday morning we took trams and the metro to get to Hősök tere (Hero's Square) where the race would take place. We walked up to a strange scene. It looked like a huge rave...a dance party. 100s of people were dancing along to music and they were all doing the same movements. How did they all know this dance, I wondered? Was it some sort of Hungarian dance that all the locals know?

We wandered around and finally found the International Registration table. We signed our lives away and received our numbers and time chips. After pinning our numbers on, we found some port-o-potties. We were ready to race!!

The race was still an hour away.

We walked around, looked at booths, drank some tea, and watched the 3.5K race. We were scoping out our competition and noticed a woman stretching and warming up. She looked intense! We joked about how we would need to take her out fast and quick. As we were joking, this woman walked up to us and started talking to us. She was sooo sweet. This was her first race and she was just as clueless as us! She spoke wonderful English as she works for the British Embassy. She told us where the start line was and informed us of the group warm-up we would all do prior to the race.

Finally, we saw the answer to our "Hungarian dance" question. The group warm-up was beginning! One man was up on a stage leading everyone in aerobics! We joined in and it was so much fun!! After this, we lined up for the race. We waited at the start line and listened to some music. Everyone was dancing and clapping! Then we were off!!

I ran, and ran, and ran! Unfortunately, I was not in as good of shape as I had hoped to be. I had been challenging myself to run 30 minutes on week days, and an hour on Sundays each week before the race. However, 2 weeks ago, the weather had started to get cold and rainy. My training was interrupted, so I was not quite as prepared as I had hoped to be. I ran with Hannah for about 4K, then she took off ahead of me. She finished in 1:03. I finished 3 minutes after her. I appreciated seeing her at the finish line!

After the race, we received medals, a prize package, and a shirt. We decided to get our medals engraved with our names and race times. It took forever and it was freezing because we were so sweaty! Then we took the metro back into the city for lunch with some friends. It was during lunch that our friends took some pictures of us. We reenacted the warm-up and race for some pictures as we didn't have our cameras with us.

All in all, the day was great! Even in the cold and exhaustion from running, I loved spending time with Hannah, seeing the city, and challenging myself with the run.

Feel free to check out race info and results: http://www.budapestmarathon.com/