A Tale of Two Races

Harvest Run 5k, Sept. 2009

This race has tormented me in the past.

2007? I fail to notice the "p.m." following the 7:00. I show up in the morning complaining about how crazy early this race was... to find absolutely no one there. Apparently, I was crazy early by about 12 hours. We had plans to go out of town, so no race for me.

2008? The baby was due something like 3 days after the race. I wanted to waddle through it, but I couldn't convince anyone to go with me and was afraid the race organizers would call the paramedics if they saw me alone.

2009? Oh yeah, this is going to be my year! I'd been focusing a little too much on cross-training (as in dropped my run mileage to maybe 10 miles per week), I'd cleaned the whole house all day in anticipation of my mother coming over, and I'd had pizza for dinner. What could go wrong??

So, my entire family abandoned me. Harry, the trash talking three year old who claimed to be prepared to win the 1 mile, fell asleep. Ted and Emma used the babysitting excuse, and my mom said it was going to get dark and she had to hit the road. Not a problem. I drove downtown, found my Garmin which luckily was charged, and got my shirt.

I laughed at my friend Dan who's seven year old totally took him. (If the kid beats you by a few feet, maybe you let him win... if he beats you by a block or two, he just took you. Just saying.) A little girl won the one mile by a landslide- in a pink dress and Crocs. Classic.

I ran my race. Nothing too exciting. The pizza was only mildly threatening, the humidity was horrible, the course was boring,... same drill as always. I finished in 26:06. Not my best, but not bad considering how slack I'd been. I won an age group trophy- too funny!

I talked to my friend Mary after the race. She recommended a good bike shop nearby. I was very proud of how mature I was being in our chat- Mary totally took me (I share your pain, Dan). I was on her heels for about 2 miles but just couldn't hang on. Mary is 20 years older than me, was wearing a knee brace, and had just won her age group in a sprint tri that morning...

Fast Forward two weeks:

Brunswick Stewbilee 5k:

Now here's the problem with signing up ahead of time. I really lost interest in doing this one after my new best friend Fred sold me a bike. That's right-- I've got a BIKE! Anyway, I strapped all the bikes onto my new rack (nightmare!!) and trucked on over to St. Simons. I hadn't run since the last 5k- because I'm fickle, and I'm all about the BIKE.

I head over to the race. Not many people there- it's the same weekend as a tri in St. Simons. The race is for the Boys and Girls Club- they made really cute bibs with colored in numbers. Unfortunately they were on paper- not bib type paper, but real copy machine type paper. Hard to pin on and pretty much disintegrated during the run. Points for cuteness though.

The race started- same boring course they usually do in Brunswick. Nothing too exciting. I finished in 25:59. I was pleased because it was 77 degrees and 100% humidity at the start(yet oddly not raining... hmmm...) Oh, and it was windy. I kept longing for my bike.

OH, how could I forget?! The Frederica Academy cross country team had a big group of kids in the race. Some of them were really fast, but I passed at least 5 kids. Let me repeat, I passed cross country kids. Now I don't know if their coach told them to treat this as the slowest run ever or what, but the ones I passed looked tired. Maybe they were really new to running, but shouldn't a 15 year old cross country kid be able to run circles around me?! Weird.

I skipped the awards. I'd spent a lot of time at the start subtly checking out the ages on the bibs, pre-disintegration. Lots of perky 38 and 39 year old women. I was a little disturbed to see my Garmin showed the course was short- like 2.99 overall. Oh well. I was ready to stop. Oh, and the T-shirt, while cool, was not race-specific. It was a basic Stewbilee shirt- not a bad shirt, but instead of saying "that's right, I ran a 5k this morning" it made me think "let me point you to parking."

I went back and got everyone dressed to hit the Stewbilee. Picture 60 vendors with Brunswick stew and cornbread to sample. Now that's my kind of post-race activity. Burn 50 calories, consume 1000.

Anyway, everyone's in the car... we're maybe two blocks away... and Harry said his "neck hurt." I'm thinking it's nothing. So, without going into too much detail, it was actually something. Nothing like a 3 year old hurling in your car while trapped in one lane of traffic with nowhere to pull over! Obviously, we did not make it to the Stewbilee this year. (Harry was fine within a few hours, but the rest of us were traumatized).

And that's the end of the Tale of Two Races. I think I'm going to continue to cross-train more than just pure running. I may not have actually improved my 5k times, but I seem to have sort of maintained my running fitness. I'm not sure how much further I could go though... I think I've changed my winter run goal from full marathon to half marathon and I've pushed it back to after Christmas. I may just procrastinate away the whole season!