Anyway, as to this week’s race. Ever since Peachtree I’ve been taking a break and then after my cruise in early August started to think about running again. I went a couple weeks and realized that August had become my lowest mileage month in a year and a half. To get me off the couch and moving again I went out and signed up for the Thanksgiving Day Half Marathon here in Atlanta. I’ve done that race for the last two years.
Having signed up for that, I realized I needed some near term races to get me started now instead of say, the first week in November. So, after searching the Georgia race database, I found one close to home in September. The 4th Annual Roswell Rise n Run.
I had to show you the logo because it was a bit ironic. Sure, it was dry during morning registration, but for the last week and about 5 minutes after the race started it has been nothing but rain here in Atlanta. Not as bad as it was on Monday – Atlanta’s 100 yr storm event – but it was setting the stage for the flooding, saturating the ground.
The race is a nice 5k/1k fun run combo but as usual, that is always trouble. They lined us up all together and who do you think made up the first 5 rows? You guessed it, about 40 6 year olds with their moms to do the 1k. The director with the bull horn suggested that if you don’t run under 5:40 miles, you may want to move back but that didn’t seem to phase but maybe one or two of those kids. They blissfully got ready to run and the race director blissfully didn’t push the matter any further.
As they sounded the horn a swarm of 6 year olds broke out of the gate like they were running a 100 yd dash. There rabbit start probably saved them from a good trampling as it stretched out the field a little before they began to tire. It was funny to be weaving through kids with the sound of mothers behind me yelling at their kids to slow down. By the 100 yd mark I made it past the last kid just before the course took a 90 degree turn. I didn’t look back but I can only imagine how bunched back up that field got making that turn.
The course started at an Elementary school and ran into a nearby park. One of the first quirks of the race was the speed bumps. The road in the park had speed bumps every hundred feet or so it seemed making for some modified strides to avoid them. I was happy when the course turned off the road and onto a crushed stone path that winds through the park. That was however, about the time the rain started coming down. It never rained hard enough to detract from the running but it was a bit more than an annoyance.
At the 1-mile mark I realized I had gone out a bit too fast for the amount of training I had put in. Mile 1 was in 7:11. I was quite winded and knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold that pace. The course then took a turn through the woods over some marked roots and into a neighborhood behind the park. I’ve never run a race that included so many various types of running surfaces.
Shortly after returning to the park through a wooded trail section back onto the crushed stone I reached the 2 mile mark. Mile 2 was in 7:53. Slower but really more in line with what I was expecting. I came around a corner and saw the race photographer from True Speed Photo. He was sitting under a table to keep his camera out of the rain but it produced an interesting angle on the shots, almost diagonal and obviously from a low angle. I really liked them, except for the obvious pain in my face...
Mile 3 is where I really started to feel my lack of training. There were some more hills here and tight turns. Interestingly the course doubled back on itself several times so you were sharing a 6-foot wide path with runners going in the opposite direction. The organizers did a good job setting up cones to keep traffic flowing correctly though.
Thoroughly soaked at the 3 mile marker I was hurting and had a little discomfort in my right hamstring (so long as it is not my IT Band, I’m okay with it!). Mile 3 was painfully slow by my standards and I was pretty upset with my 8:29. That is training run time, not a race! Mad at that split I took off for the last .1 miles as hard as my winded lungs would let me. The last .1 miles was in 41 seconds (6:50 pace if you were to extrapolate it out…). Of course it helped that the final tenth of a mile was all downhill, but we can leave that part out, right? We’ll also ignore the fact that my PR of 21 minutes flat translates to 6:46 per mile for the entire race, not just the final tenth of a mile…
It all goes to prove that when we aren’t moving forward, we ARE moving backwards. There is no such thing as standing still.
Post race was interesting. It was the first 5k I have ever done that didn’t finish at the start line. We finished in the park and had to walk back to the school to get to the food, free stuff, and the T-shirts. At the finish line we asked which way to go and one of the volunteers pointed a group of us in the wrong direction. We ended up walking the long way around, back on the course with runners still going, probably going a good mile, instead of the ¼ mile short cut most people were pointed too. I guess I looked like I needed to walk a little bit more.
As for results, I can’t find them posted anywhere so I don’t know where I finished in my group or overall. My time as I passed under the clock was 24:15 but that was not "official". At first I got a little excited as I noted that I was the second card dropped in my division’s slot, then I realized he was pulling them out and logging them as he got them. I should have known that that time wouldn’t be anywhere near the podium in the 35-39 yr old male division…
So, there you have it, my first full race report in quite a while. And look Real, a blog post with NO mention of bowel movements, wait a minute, crud! Ignore this paragraph please. Anywho…
1 comment:
I don't think that looks like pain on your face. I think it looks like annoyance from the rain. At least that's how I look when I'm being pelted with water from heaven...
Post a Comment