2009 Cooper River Bridge Run

Me, my dad, my daughter Jenni and her husband Ben, drove to Charleston on Friday evening for our 2nd Cooper River Bridge Run. We got settled into our hotel home by 11 pm and spent a little time laying out our running outfits and pinning on our bib numbers and affixing the timing chip to our shoes. Lights out finally by midnight and a short sleep as we set the alarm for 5am! Of course we were too keyed up to sleep and I don't feel like I really ever got to sleep at all.

We had some power bars and Gatorade and left the hotel by 5:40 am to walk 6 or 7 blocks to stand in line to get a bus ride to Mt. Pleasant to the start of the race. The line itself is at least 5 or 6 blocks long but it moves pretty fast as they have every bus in the city and surrounding area running to transport runners. At least 10 or 12 pull up, runners board, they pull away and then another group of 10 or 12 comes along. They use city buses, school buses, church buses, activity buses! You name it!

There are no words to describe the first inkling of daylight with it's pink, purple, blue hues over the horizon as we cross the bridge that we will be running over in just a few hours! They let us out and then we walk at least a half mile to the start line. Now that's a moving target as there were 36,190 registered runners. Just the sheer number of people puts the start line spanning over a mile or more. This year we got smart and registered as runners over 60 minutes instead of walkers, so we got closer. We could even see the start line! It took us a mere 7 minutes to get to the start line this year!

So we stretched and chatted and looked at the crowd and moved up twice to fill the gap between the groups of different abilities, then moved back to give everyone room! Then the gun went off and we stood still! And then we inched up a for or two and then we stood still and finally a very slow walk and a little faster and finally crossed the start line. Yaaaaaayyyyyyyy! Then we started on in a trot and it was just amazing to see all those people running in the same direction for the same goal. Ahhh it felt good!

We ran for over 2 miles before we even arrived at the bridge. It's a pretty steep grade at that point going up the ramp. The facts of the bridge state that it is a 4% grade but I am pretty sure that's on the bridge itself and the ramp is steeper. Anyway, we walked most of that!

One of the best feelings is cresting the apex of the bridge and suddenly feeling the strain go away as we start running downhill tirelessly! At the height of this welcomed feeling, I heard a scuffle behind me and then a thud and turned to see my 83 year old dad lying flat on the bridge. I just knew it was him before I turned around as we were weaving in and out through the crowd passing runners and slow joggers. I freaked out and screamed "oh that's my dad!" Some strong men picked him up and set him upright and we moved over to the left to see that he had landed with his left hand knuckle side down and skinned his knuckles pretty badly on the grooved road. Blood was just dripping off his hand. He skinned his right elbow and it was a pretty bad road burn. We immediately went to one of the national guardsmen on the side of the bridge and asked for bandages. He didn't have any but offered to call the EMTs. My dad wasn't having any of that and whipped out his ever present handkerchief, wrapped it around his knuckles and trotted on down toward Charleston! What a trooper! I was all for giving it up and seeing about some medical care but he wasn't having any of that!

So after dripping blood all the way down the bridge, we turned the corner onto Meeting street and came across a water station. We both grabbed a cupful, and then I grabbed another one to pour over his hand. He literally squeezed the blood out of the handkerchief, rewrapped it and kept on running. About 1/2 mile further, I spotted a group of EMTs on bikes and we stopped to ask about bandages. They had some in their fanny packs and whipped out some 4 by 4's and tape. We slapped it on there, and I grabbed the tape and tore it with my teeth, wrapped it around it, thanked them and ran off!

The feeling of running through that area of Charleston is indescribable as there are so many people on the streets cheering us on and offering words of encouragement and high-fiving us! Just a few more turns and finally we see the finish line. We had ended up walking a bit but just had to muster up some energy to run through the finish line! Out time was 81 minutes and 29 seconds. We shaved about 5 minutes off our time from last year and we figured we spent maybe 5 minutes overall dealing with the fall. We were very pleased. The crowd was all but unbearable and we had to fight to get to the water and the fruit. But we managed to find a nice lil wall to sit on and enjoy the crowd and rehydrate and replenish. We wanted to go to the awards arena but he crowd was so thick and I was anxious to get back to the hotel to see the real extent of my dad's injuries.

Thank goodness for my boys being in scouting as I still had the first aid kit one of them had prepared as part of earning their first aid merit badge in the trunk of my car. I was able to bandage him up pretty good til we got back to our house at North Myrtle Beach. So we cleaned up, check out and went to T Bonz for our traditional celebratory lunch and a well deserved beer!

As soon as we returned, the results were posted on the internet and we found out that my dad came in FIRST place in the men's 80 years old and over division!