Jingle All The Way 10K race report

Sunday December 13th was Jingle All the Way 10K in DC downtown by the Potomac river. Chavone and Jerome were running too. We were going to drive together but the weather's been nasty last couple of days. We got up at 5:30 (after an interrupted sleep) and decided that we don't want to run. But we still wanted to go to the race nevertheless. "Atleast lets pick up the race shirts", we thought.
I guess Chavone and Jerome were not coming to an agreement if they wanted to go so we decided that we will drive separate. We dressed up and drove over to find a good parking spot. It was just drizzling a tad. So no harm in running. Picked up the bibs and shirts and got to the finish line just in time for the race to start. I didn't really stretch a lot. We were jogging from the parking spot to the start off point. So I thought that should be warm up enough.
We positioned ourselves almost at the back. The crowd was 3,700 strong! Quite a few were dressed up in Santa hats and dresses and sorts. It was a fun crowd. The temperatures were ~34F. Pretty cold. Madhura and I were together for about half mile and then I took off after that.

At the 3 mile marker, I saw the leaders heading back. This time I had my stop watch started. Hit the 3 mile marker at ~29min. Good enough. I was determined to do a negative split this time. I took off my ear muffs at about the 2 mile point. There was too much of a crowd and the roads were quite narrow. So the weaving was problematic. But who am I to complain. All throughout the race, my goal was 55:00min. Then the dastardly cramps set in at 4miles! Gosh! No amount of deep breathing helped. The pain was stabbing! So I slowed down to a walk. Madhura caught up with me. She was going strong! Great girl! But she was worried about her back which she had thrown out a couple of weeks ago. So she prodded me to go on and not worry about her. "I don't have a goal. You go for yours", she said. So I took off trying to ignore the pain. I knew by 5 miles that I was not going to make it at 55min. So I decided that I have to make it within 60 mins. My previous peeve of 61min at the "Life Without Limits 10K" race would be 'avenged'. I hit the finish line at 58min. My tag timing was 56:39. Not bad at all!

Madhura had some problems with her hands getting too cold. Nothing too serious though.
Me on the other hand - after we had breakfast with Chavone and Jerome, the lateral side of my right foot started aching like crazy. Madhura doesn't like the look of it after she did some tests on them. Well, its a wait-n-watch game. Hopefully its just a damaged tendon/ligament/muscle and not a stress fracture. Time will tell. Till then its R-I-C-E (Rest Ice Compression Elevation).
Pictures as we get them.