Thee Rivers 12K Race Report

Today Jason and I ran our first ever small race. What a different experience.

As usual we were up and at the race early. The race started at 8:30 am, and they started handing the packets out at 7am....Jason, I and Jason's mom Beverly were there at 6:45. Of course. So we hung out and enjoyed the weather and walked around a little bit and waited for them to be ready for the handing out of the packets. I tell the person working my name, and Jason does the same and then another guys said, "Wait are you the people from Chicago?" I said that indeed we were and he said oh I remembered your names and couldn't believe you were all the way from Chicago. I told him that Jason's parents lived here and that's why we chose to try this race out.

We hooked up with my college roommate who drove all the way from Indianapolis to see us. That's right I'm talking about the very famous Bridgette of EternalSunshine. After she got there we split off from Beverly and Bridgette and headed to the start line....which consisted of a line drawn in the road with red paint with the word "Start" spray painted above it. Nice. The cops stopped traffic long enough to get folks to the starting line and for the gun to go off. What's strange about a race like this for me is that, ok everyone is going now. Usually in the races that I run I am in some kind of corral with people running my speed. Not here, the gun went off and bang everyone went out at what seemed to be very close to the speed of light.

Oh wait, I forgot to mention that it was REALLY hot and REALLY humid and REALLY sunny at race time.....keep this in mind.

So I used Garmin to program in a workout so I could keep track of how I was doing on my time goals. We wanted to finish in 1 hour which is slightly over an 8 minute mile. So I set the workout for 7.46 miles (I don't know how to get to the kilometers option) and I put 1 hour on the time. This worked out really well as during the race I was able to flip screens and look at me and my virtual partner and see how far ahead or behind him I was.

Anyways, our first mile was in 7:44....a bit fast I knew already given what speed I know we CAN do and the weather. But it seemed like we were going really slow because there were lots of people in front of us (note to self : people in ft. wayne run fast!). So we kept up with this pace for a couple miles, with Miles 2&3 in 7:39 and 7:44 respectively.

Then the heat got to me. Hence mile 4 in 8:12. I gotta send a shout out to Jason by the way who chose to stay with me today on this race. I think he probably could have stuck at that 7:45ish pace for the whole race, but I wasn't doing quite as well. So Mile 5 in 8:14, Mile 6 in 8:07.

Now we have about 1.5 miles left to go and and I'm starting to think that we could still make our time goal of 1 hour. The little virutal partner had me ahead by about 150 ft at this point and 300 ft ahead most of the way which was nice to see. We pushed though the next mile in 8:19, and see Bevery and Bridgette cheering us on. We are able to really crank through the last .46 miles with a pace of 7:35. The second I crossed the line the Garmin beeped at me with a cute little message that said "Congratulations you are the winner". So I beat the little virtual partner which was fun to see. Unfortunately I didn't stop the watch at that point and it kept moving. So on the watch for the 7.46 miles, the time was 59:32. Woot. This put us at a 7:59 pace. (I can't find this informatoin in Training center though...just the total time the watch was on...anyone know how to get the quick workout information off the watch? Thanks!)

Although I had to push through many of the miles to keep up with our goal and I am exhausted now, I am way happy that I was able to stick it through. It was hard running without 39,999 of your closest friends, but I think it's a great learning experience because even in those big races there are times when you feel really alone and have the bear down and get through a couple miles.

I feel REALLY bad that I slowed Jason down by a little bit....did I mention that I shimmied across the line first? I really am an asshole. It was really a tie, but I gave the woman my number first. I don't know how I did in the field of people, I am guessing that will be online in the next couple of days. So I'll update you all when that's up.

It's now time for a celebratory beer and possibly (probably) a nap. I will also upload a map of the course later today....but MB is being slow and I want a beer!