Refuse to Quit: First Race Ever!

I know I haven't had much to blog about recently, especially climbing related, but I did get to run in my first race yesterday with Brent, Kim and Brook, and Enoch. Here is the race report I wrote up for my running blog at http://jun.fastrunningblog.com/ .

I got there right at 10am so that I could get signed in, stretched, and then get a mile or two in as a warm-up. Since I was meeting my brother there we decided to do all of this together, which was nice as this was the first race either of us had ever been in. The kids race was slated for 10:45 and the rest of the races were to start at 11am.

For the warm-up, Brent and I headed north on Geneva Rd and into a neighborhood where we grew up years ago in elementary school. It was cool to see our old house. I probably haven't driven by it in over 10 years. We looped back around through the neighborhood and back to the park. It ended up being 1.87 miles at a nice slow pace. I thought it was a perfect warm-up.

Here's where the problem started. We got back at about 10:45, just in time to watch the kidlets run, which was super fun. But then they ended up being extremely late getting the 5 and 10k races started. They didn't end up getting them started until 11:20, which meant that my warm-up had not only worn off, but now I was even a little tight from standing around.

Once the race began I tried to jump out in front of the crowd so that I wouldn't have to weave through the pack of potential 5k runners. It worked to some extent and I found myself within about the first 15 or so people. As I passed the 5k turn-around things cleared out considerably and I was alone, for the most part. Twinkies was about 100m ahead and Davy C. about 50m ahead of him. There were about 2 or 3 other men ahead of me spread out over about a quarter of a mile. I tried to keep Twinkies in sight and did a pretty good job for more than half of the race. I was running at a much faster pace then I was used to for that distance and found it hard to level my breathing. This plagued me the entire race.

Because I had Davy and Twinkies in my sights, like them, I turned at the wrong place and ended up getting passed by the person behind me as he didn't make the same mistake. I later learned that the way we took was the intended path for the race, but there was no marker to indicate that, so most people took what would be a minor short-cut. I was smart enough to go that way on the way back.

With about a mile left I was getting pretty tired. It didn't help that it got extremely hot and I was fighting a dry mouth and lips. I had set a goal to come in under 45:00, but as I got within a quarter of a mile I knew I wasn't going to make it. I later learned that the race was actually longer than a 10k and that if I adjusted the mileage I would have actually just made my goal. Above all things, that makes me the happiest. I ran the entire race in 46:16. I'm very excited. Here are a few pictures of those of us who ran.

Me finishing in 46.16