PR, no food for you!
My Veterans Day was pretty mundane for most of it. Ali had to work so it was just me and the “girls”. I wanted to give the floor surfaces of the house a thorough cleaning after having Maggie and Clara running wild for a few days. The floor/carpet was covered in dog hair, dog slobber and various other dog bodily fluids I’m sure. So I swept it with the Dyson Animal and followed up with the steam cleaner. Man was it ever dirty. Even though I went over the high traffic areas repeatedly I was still pulling very dirty water. If you have dogs tile with throw rugs may be a better option.
Wednesday night Ali and signed up to run in the Veterans Day Midpoint Bridge Run. This run is sort of special for us, it was the first 5K race we ever ran in a few years back. It’s also a cool run because it happens at night and they close off a bridge that the run is held on. You are running over a river for most of the race, pretty neat. Before the race Ali and I agreed we would both run at our own pace. She said she wasn’t going to try to break any speed records so I shouldn’t expect to see her just under the 30 minute mark like she turned in up in PA.
As we warmed up for the race I didn’t feel particularly good. My legs felt stiff and my right knee felt less than stellar. My overall energy level was rather low. I have been sort of down because of the whole Spook situation. I had no big expectations for how I would perform. In fact I recall thinking shortly before the race that I may have been happier at home at that point and time. I just wasn’t into it.
So the gun sounds and off we go. After getting out of the initial quagmire of nearly 700 runners I had some room to run. Instinctively I started passing people. I have this weird mental thing that goes on during a race. If I spot people ahead of me that look like they should not be ahead of me I try to catch them, it will bother me immensely otherwise. All of a sudden the sluggishness I felt warming up was gone. I utilized my long legs to lengthen my stride without greatly increasing the speed of my leg movement.
When I got to the first person calling out times I was astonished when I heard 7:16. I don’t run 7:16 miles, wow I must really be hauling ass. Well I found out later that the woman was actually sitting at the 2 mile marker for the return trip. Why she was calling out times I don’t know, I heard it confused a lot of people. The bridge has a long gentle rise in the middle that we had to traverse twice, out and back. The hill was enough to break a bunch of people as they stopped and walked. The hill didn’t slow me down too much at all.
It wasn’t until the two mile mark that I realized Iwasn’t running 7:16 miles, more like 8 minute miles which is still good for me. As I accelerated to the finish I was excited to see I broke the 25 minute mark for the first time EVER. I finished with an official time of 24:56 which was really more like 24:45-50 based on the lag until I got to cross the start line. I was amazed that I set a personal record (PR) based on how I felt before the race. I guess it’s a testament to adrenalin.
After grabbing a bottle of water I waited for Ali, figuring she would come in after the 30 minute mark. You can imagine my surprise when she came across the finish line at just over 29 minutes! So much for taking it easy. She shaved a full minute off her PA time running a course with inclines, wow.
We both did well in our age groups. I finished 9th out of almost 30 and Ali was in the top 25% of the 60 or so women in her age category. When I looked at the final results I noticed there were a few men in my age group that finished a few seconds earlier than me. If I knew that I would have kicked it up a few notches and might have been able to get 5th or 6th. Regardless I was proud of both of our efforts.
After the race we headed to the area where the refreshments are, both Ali and I were looking forward to a well earned post race snack. I was shocked to see nothing on the table except orange quarters. I asked if they had anything else, I never saw a race that had just orange quarters, not everyone likes to eat oranges (me). That was all they had, they said the main sponsor which was a restaurant/bar had the rest of the food at their place, miles away at some mall. Some genius thought it would be a great idea to force the runners to drive somewhere else for food. “How stupid”, both Ali and I said to each other as we walked back to the car. Over 700 signed up and you only have water and oranges at the end??? It really annoyed me. Obviously whomever made that call is not a runner, else they would realize the lunacy of that arrangement. Instead of driving business towards their doors just the opposite will happen in our situation, I’ll never go there now, not that I would have anyways.
Bed felt very good for both of us once we got home.