The Charles Street 12 is a 12 mile race into Baltimore city. It’s a challenging course with several rolling hills and ending on a hill as well, however, this allows for a strong sense of accomplishment at the finish. As always with Charm City Run races the crowd energy was high and there was plenty of camaraderie through the suffering with fellow runners and spectators. This is a great race to use as part of training for a marathon as it offers plenty of challenging opportunities to practice race day strategies. It’s an especially helpful course for practicing pacing skills since the hills can make keeping a consistent pace more difficult. I enjoyed using this race as a part of my build to Marine Corps Marathon next month. I was proud that my efforts to hold back my pace in the start paid off in the later miles and allowed me to finish strong. Additionally, the hilly terrain allowed me to practice mental strategies for pushing through discomfort, an important part of marathon training as the marathon will inevitably become very difficult in the final miles.
This race concluded the B3 series which incudes the Shamrock 5k, Sole of the City 10k, and Charles Street 12. This year was my first time completing the series. I enjoyed how it allows you to have many races to look forward to in the year and creates a good progression in distance to increase the challenge as the year goes on. I was able to finding the series at the 6th female overall!