Tap N' Run - Nashville

On the home stretch of our four races in four weeks for April!  We ran the Tap N' Run last Saturday.  It was nice to not be going out of town for the weekend!  We were able to hang around the house, work on projects and then head up to Nashville to run that afternoon.

 Obviously this race is in the afternoon.  Who wants to wake up to run and drink beer in the morning (other than my younger more "youthful exuberant" self as the academic probation adviser once called me in college).  The race was at 5:00, so we headed downtown around 3:00 to go to packet pickup at BB Kings.  We of course took the Jeep as it was a BEAUTIFUL day, but that also meant we forgot Ben's parking pass for his lot downtown.
No problem, I have this all figured out.  He can drop me off at BB Kings, I'll get the packets and he can go to the parking lot by Hooters and we'll meet there.  He drops me off, I go in get the packets, and head back out and realize due to the traffic he's not even a block from where he dropped me off.

I sprint...full speed to catch him before he turned on 3rd where I knew there wouldn't be any cars.  I was probably 5 feet from him, reaching for the door knob, out of breath so I couldn't holler, and he makes the turn and leaves me in the dust.....of course he got a huge kick of of this as I walked slowly to the car so we could grab lunch at SATCO. (yum!)

After we scarfed some tacos and cheese dip we headed back downtown to run.  The costumes.  Oh man everyone was in costume.  I wore a tie-dye shirt and a beer mug hat leftover from St. Patrick's day and I was under-dressed.  There was a man dressed as a baby, ninja turtles, Mario Kart, a couple of guys barefooted since they were hanging out in a bar downtown, heard about the race, signed up and ran it barefooted.

the starting corral

They were having issues with the sound, when I say issues, I mean ear-piercing feedback.  You'd think in Music City someone would be able to work a PA.

Starting Line Beer!

We got in the starting corral and were handed a beer - not a full beer, I think it's around 5 ounces.  They count us down and we chug and run, we ran down 2nd, up Broadway, turned on 3rd then headed towards the dreaded Pedestrian Bridge.  The degree of the arch of this bridge is insane, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to run it.  This is by no means a fast race, almost everyone jogs or walks it, roughly 99% of the people walk the bridge.  We got to the top of it, a Saturday evening in April means one thing to all high schoolers, Prom.  There was a group of people who obviously didn't check to see what was going on downtown as they headed to the bridge to take prom pictures.  A group of maybe 16 kids on one side of the bridge and their parents on the other side...and hundreds of runners between.  They tried to take advantage of a break in the runners for the obligatory "jumping picture" but they didn't account for Ben's ridiculous speed, as he ran, and jumped at the exact moment they did.  I'd love to see a copy of that picture.

Just a couple of Hulks

This Hulk knew the JT dance that was playing over the speaker so obviously she had to complete it.

Then at the bottom, another chug station.  We go around the stadium, back across the other bridge to Printer's Alley to another chug station, then back around to 2nd and are done.  It's only a 4K so it's certainly not that difficult.

Printer's Alley

This is the 2nd time we ran this.  We also did it in 2012.  Would we do it again?  Probably not.  Would we recommend it to people? Absolutely.

It's a great race, pretty well organized.  I wish they had more entertainment throughout the course, even if it's just speakers blasting music.  It was completely dead on the other side of the river so anything would have been nice.

We scooped up our awesome medals and headed to Bro's for ENTIRELY too much crawfish with the family.

Finish Line Medals and Beers!