This was my second year running the Charles Street 12, and I must say this year I enjoyed it even more. (Check out my race review for the 2015 Charles Street 12 here.)
As usual packet pickup was a breeze, and I was SO excited to get my B3 premium for making it to the third race in the series. This year for women it was a gray Under Armour wrap up full zip sweatshirt with the race series logo embroidered on the front.
On the back on the right hip there is an embroidered Charm City Run logo.
The women's pullover is purple with a Charm City Run logo on the front.
And a ginormous Charles Street 12 race logo on the back!
Soon after we lined up to get started. (It started a little late this year because the announcements took a little longer than usual.) I aligned myself right next to the 2:10:00 pacers and kept up with them for the first few miles. Soon afterwards I lost sight of them and just accepted that I might catch up with them at a later point (which happened a couple of times.) This year I focused more on enjoying the course and trying to beat the previous year's time. In general, the course is pretty hilly with the worst hill being at the very beginning and at mile 2.5.
(Remember folks: Don't take pictures while running. It does not end well.)
By the time I had taken this picture I was starting to feel ready to be done. (The Washington Monument is at about mile 9.75.) I began thinking of the race in terms of "I've run 3 5k's and I have less than one left!!" and that helped get me a little extra motivation to keep pushing to the finish. I also thought of the race in terms of my previous time (2:22:20) and realized I was well on my way to crushing it. But by how much? Thinking in those terms helped me push to the finish and made the promenade seem so much easier than the previous year.
When I crossed the finish line I immediately stopped and looked at my Garmin in shock. It said 2:10:06!! (My official time ended up being 2:10:03.) I had absolutely crushed my previous year's time...but where were the pacers? I had lost them long ago and somehow they managed to get seriously ahead of their stated finishing time! (Sometimes this happens, which can be nice if you're able to keep up with them.) Either way, I'm definitely not complaining about finishing a full 12 minutes before my 2015 time.
Afterwards I grabbed water, my medalS (one of the perks of doing the B3 race challenge is the extra medal), a box lunch (a turkey wrap, apple and cookie) and waited around for my friends to finish. Soon after running into another Oiselle runner, I ran into one of my friends who knew where to find everybody else. Soon we all waited for the final person in our group to finish and I mostly hung around to kill time since I knew traffic was going to be a mess. In the meantime we caught up with one another and checked out some of the vendors since it was a gorgeous morning. (I stocked up on lip balms from Horizon Plumbing since they're always awesome and they seem to offer different flavors at each event. This time it was cherry!)
Overall, I really enjoyed this race again. Charm City Run really knows how to put on a good race and the attention to detail is amazing. There were tons of water stops (although like last year, they need to spread them out a little more evenly) and the on course support was great. The race has a lot to offer runners in the way of amenities--bag check, pacers, an amazing premium and medal, ample portajohns pre-race, and after the race the food and water are easily and readily available.
I totally recommend this race. It's challenging but doable (as you could see from the elevation chart above) and it goes through a lot of scenic, lesser known areas of Baltimore city (the college campuses you run by are gorgeous) and you get a great look at the Washington monument as you run along the cobblestone streets.
