HarvardPilgrim finish at the 50 - 10K

Sometime in June I asked my Facebook pals where they were racing for July 4th and I got some good suggestions in my neck of the woods.  I love holiday races!  They just lend themselves to costumes and as you all know I love costumes!  Out of the 3 races near us we picked the HarvardPilgrim finish at the 50 kids races and 10k at Gillette Stadium.  The race was switched to the evening of July 3rd this year.  We headed up to Patriot Place at Gillette on Monday afternoon to pick up our bibs and check out the shops before shifting to the outlet mall one exit away on I-495.  We were trying to pace ourselves.  I knew it was all too much for one day so we spaced it out.

There were lots of kids activities going on at Patriot Place: sand play, coloring, face painting, golf putting, etc.  We mostly stuck to window shopping and then moved on.

Sand play near check in!

Tuesday morning we stuck around the house.  We made our red, white & blue headbands and got our gear ready for our races.  The girls races started at 3:30 so we headed out at 1:30.

3 homemade red sparkle skirts getting ready to run!

They had all of the kids & parents sit in the stands by age group.
They were sweeping the stands and putting kids up on the jumbo screen.

The Patriot's mascot was out and about meeting the runners.

I could not resist!  My little runner took this picture!

After the girls races we had about an hour and a half until the 5k and 10k went off together.  I am not into mass starts for multiple race distances.  There were 3409 finishers in the 5k and 2984 finishers in the 10k.

This guy was right behind me at the start.  Love your shirt!

The course took us around the parking lot and then in toward Foxboro, before looping back onto the stadium property and to the finish at the 50.

Here we are with like .5 miles to go!  All we need to do is get back inside the stadium!

Headed back into the stadium!

Hear comes the helmet

Every now and then, if you run with a camera, you will take a shot like this.
Look mom I am running in Gillette Stadium!

Across the line and looking back!
All the fans were in the stands watching their runners
enter the stadium and cross the line on the jumbo screen!

I finished (and there were no medals) :(
A football or helmet shaped medal would have been great!  Maybe next year.

Loved the kiddie pools after the finish line.

I wanted to climb right into this one.
I can't believe no one was sitting in a pool.
I am thinking that there are a few ice machines at the stadium.

No medals, but great snacks!
Thumbs up to the snacks!

Final goodbye shot to the stadium

So my race was fantastic!  I was trilled with how I did.  I had been on my feet for most of the afternoon supporting the girls and the weather was toasty.  I just kept telling myself that I was well warmed up and ready to race.  I guess it worked.  I was able to finish with a 52:07 for the 10k.  I was 31 out of 390 in my age group!  That is the stat that really makes me happy.  On that day, with that course, in that weather, with women in my age group, I did pretty darn well!

There were still 5k runners finishing with me, which was confusing.  I wish they would have kept the course split through the line.  Slower 5k runners were mixing in with the 10k runners and it was just awkward right as we were all focusing on finishing.

One last photo - the 10k was all on surface roads.  It was a straight up regular the road race.  The 5k - not so much!  After they ran around the parking lot they had to run up one of the stand ramps and then back down another.  Kind of looks like a child's toy doesn't it!