The Falmouth Road Race is a 7 mile race, not a 10k or a 15k but a 7 mile one. It's random but for August, on a mostly non shaded, hilly course, it might be the perfect distance.

Pre-Race
There wasn't bib pick up the day of so after running a 5K in the Bronx Saturday morning, the boy and I drove up to Cape Cod (and hit tons of traffic on I-95) but made it to bib pick up before they closed at 6pm.

Even though I was at bib pick up well before closing (5:15pm), a lot of the vendors already starting cleaning up so I didn't get to check out too many things. I did my loop around a few times (mostly looking for some snacks after such a long car ride) after picking up my goods.

The bib is awesome and had my name on it but instead of shirts, we got an awesome tote bag which is perfect for the beat and a large mug plus an awesome poster.

Race Day

Since my mom travels a ton and has free points laying around, I got a hotel room in New Bedford but New Bedford is 40 minutes from Falmouth (no traffic). Knowing that I wanted to sleep in a bit after spending all of Saturday running around, we grabbed breakfast around 6:30am and were on the road by 6:45am to head to the junior high school in Falmouth where buses were waiting to take us to Woods Hole where the race began.

The GPS said we'd be there around 7:20am. Except there was a ton of traffic and I wasn't dropped off until 7:45am. When I got to the middle school, there were lines stretching across fields to get onto the buses.

Despite various materials on the website saying last buses were at 7:45am (or in the booklet in my bag which said 8am), I didn't get on to the bus until 8:10-15 or so.

When we got off the buses, a 10 minute walk took us to race village and then we started to see open water. It was gorgeous.

After getting some water and using the port-a-potties, I got myself in my "corral" except these corrals were self placement ones. You just placed yourself where you thought your pace would be for the race. I put myself in between 10 and 11 minute paces.

The wheelchair races started at 8:40am, everyone else 9am but groups of people were going off every 2 minutes or so. So even though I was in my corral 10 minutes before 9am, I still had time to kill so I was hanging out by the water.

So glad there were water stations in the race corrals!
Around 9:20 we started moving towards the start and finally went off around 9:25.

The race started in Wood Hole which is a really cute town with lots of small cafes and restaurants after running through town we made it to the water where it was gorgeous. In the far distance you could see the hill with runners running around it.

This race was gorgeous, hilly and had amazing energy and crowd support. Admittedly, it did get a bit crowded, I found the first mile to be the least crowded but these roads were curvy and tight roads. Other than mile 3-4, majority of this race was in the hot sun. The sea breeze provided some relief but not enough. There were plenty of water stations and locals with their hoses out spraying runners as they went by.

Almost to the finish...the downhill before the VERY STEEP up hill.
I read the race website and course description so I was endlessly waiting for that final hill before the downhill finish. I started to speed up and hit the top of the hill then realized that was not the hill they were talking about. The final hill was steep and painful and it was already such a hot race. My boyfriend was standing at the top of the hill and said at one point people made it up and just started vomiting right at the top (gross).

The finish line was awesome. A huge American flag hung over the finish. Quite the sight.

The end is near! The American flag hanging over the finish!
After finishing, we made our way to the finisher's area/family meeting area. I finally made it there after 15 minutes or so. We got bottles of cold water immediately after we finished but had to walk to the meeting area to get food: pretzels, cape cod chips, apples, cranberry (?) juice (I don't like cranberry juice so I didn't get any at least I thought it was cranberry juice).

I met the boy under the last name sign where we sat in the grass and I ate and stretched. There were free hot dogs in the meeting area, flavored sparking water from Poland Spring and I think there were free Yasso yogurt bars but I think they ran out before I could grab one.

We walked 10 minutes to the car which was in a random patch of grass in a residential neighborhood, right by the beach. Instead of sitting in traffic for hours trying to get out of the area, the boy and I went to the beach for 2 hours.
By the time we left around 1:30pm, the crowds and traffic were gone. We ended up driving the course in the opposite direction (it's a point to point course) and grabbing lunch on the way back to Woods Hole. What I noticed this time around were the large painted mileage signs on the road. During the race I had only noticed that miles 4,5,6 to be painted on the ground but not the others however, they were all painted, including the start line.

Post race I went back to the start line

This is a sold out race and the only way in is through lottery. I believe the entry fee was $55 and I would totally do this again next year. It's such a great family event to do (I did notice a decent amount of kids and teens doing it as well).

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