I've been reading a lot of The Athena Diaries, which is a blog written by an Athena runner and triathlete. 'Athena,' I've come to learn, is a competition category for women who weigh more than 150 lbs. They don't have it in every race, though, and in fact I've yet to find a race in my area that does have it. Anyway Misty, the author of the blog, usually writes 'race reports' after she does a race, and it seems to be, like, a thing that runners do. And since I have recently declared myself a runner, I too shall write a race report.
There's a series of three summer-to-fall races put on by a running club out here, and the first one is a 4-mile race on the 4th of July. It is the aptly named 'Four on the Fourth.' Because my running buddy H and I long ago hit the 4-mile mark in our training, and because we're trying to gain experience at running races in general, we signed up for this one. (Also, I hear if you do all three races - including a 10k in October and an 8k in November - you get a jacket!)
The night before the race H stayed at my place, since I live really close to the course. Unfortunately, we were both up pretty late because she had to babysit until around midnight and I had to wait up for her. Our 6:30 wake-up call came really early, which reminds me that I need to start practicing getting up and running in the early morning. The half marathon does start at 7am, after all. Temperatures in the week preceding the holiday weekend had been inching toward infernal, so imagine my delight when I checked weather.com and found out that it was a refreshing 65 degrees outside! It appears that there is a Santa Claus, and he's in the business of granting 4th-of-July wishes you didn't even realize you'd made.
I ate most of an English muffin and gave H the good news about the weather, and then we headed over to the race. When we got there, there were Runners, with a capital 'R,' doing freaking warm-up drills and shit. My mind was blown. To cope, I started trying to pick out normal-looking people that I thought I could take. They were mostly people over 40. I made the mistake of mentioning this to H and she made me feel guilty about it, but what was I supposed to do? There were 80-pound bird-people running sprints within my field of vision, and I needed to maintain a winner's outlook.
Unlike the Susan G. Komen race, this one was much smaller and a little more informal. The course was a mostly flat and shady loop around town that started and ended at a middle school and stayed in residential areas. The first tenth of a mile was on a major-ish road which apparently could only be blocked off for a short period of time, so all the runners had to wait until the last minute before lining up on the starting line. About 10 minutes before the start, we all herded from the school parking lot down to the starting line, and H and I dutifully took our places at the back of the pack. While she was setting up her ipod and I was nervously babbling about something-or-other, we suddenly heard the loud POP! of the starting gun. "Oh shit, was that it??" "I guess so, let's go!" We half-jogged across the start and for the first few yards while H got everything situated. (Someone later told me that they heard the guy yell "15 seconds!" before shooting off the gun, but I guess we were too far away back in Slowburg to hear him. He couldn't have rented a megaphone? I ask you.)
I'm still not used to racing, but I know enough to know that adrenaline can get the better of you and cause you to accidentally run way too fast at the beginning and wear yourself out, so I kept my eye on my fancypants watch to make sure we weren't going too quickly. I also wanted to help H pace herself because she was really disappointed with how she did at the Komen race and I hoped this would be a better experience for her. As a result, the first mile or so was a continuous loop of this conversation: "How fast are we going?" "Too fast, we've got to slow down." "Ok." It just felt so good outside and it was so pretty and there were so many people moving around us that it was hard not to get carried away.
As we tried to rein it in to a reasonable pace, I reassured H that all the people ahead of us were the fools that would have to stop and walk later, allowing us to pass them and be the ultimate champions. She looked over her shoulder and reported that there were only a handful of people behind us. We were passed by a man and his 6-year-old son. But no matter! We didn't come to beat anyone but ourselves.
H tends to take more walk breaks than I do, and also doesn't have a great time with hills, so when we got halfway up our second hill (at about mile 1.3), she stopped to walk and waved me on. And so I was off on my own. I maintained a pretty consistent pace (about 12:00, which was faster than I expected) throughout the race, trying to balance my desire to let loose and go flying down the course, and my fear that at any moment I would hit a wall and have to stop and walk. Ultimately, I felt good enough at the end that I think I probably could have done it a bit faster, but I figure it was better to be safe than sorry, and I'm glad I ended in good shape.
Although I don't consider myself to be particularly competitive, I found that I could not stop myself from passing people. It's just that there were a lot of people, going about the same pace as me, spread out every few feet in front of me. I'd be coming up on one and think, "oh, I can definitely pass her, and after that, I'll slow down a little." But as soon as I passed that person I'd be within range to pass another. It went on like that from the time I left H to about the 2.5 mile mark, at which point I had passed everyone that was easily passable. The next closest people were a pair of women about 50 feet ahead of me, and I was too afraid of wearing myself out to risk speeding up and going after them. When I realized I had passed everyone I could, I thought with some satisfaction, "This is it. I am officially the fastest of the slowest." My place as President and Benevolent Dictator of the Slow Motion Running Club has been validated. Stick with me, kids, and you too can be marginally faster than the slowest 10% of runners out there.
I'd like to pause here for a word about pace. If you are not a runner, you may not have much perspective on this, so I thought I'd fill you in. People who consider themselves to be Runners with a capital 'R' (the ones inexplicably doing the warm-up sprints before the race) would probably tell you that a 7:00 (that's minutes per mile) pace is respectable. At my fastest, I probably manage about a 10:00 pace, although I hope to get a bit faster in the future. For the half marathon, I'm thinking that the best-case scenario will be about a 13:00 pace, which is where I had set the bar for Four on the Fourth (and which is admittedly a pretty low bar, but that's how I like it). Thus, I was quite satisfied that I ran the race with a consistent 12:00 pace, but it's worth noting that in the Wide World of Sports this is really pretty slow. You'll see what I mean when I get to the part about the awards ceremony.
Anyway, back to the race! The best part about passing all of those people and assuming my rightful place as Queen of Slowburg was that there was one last decent-sized hill to climb as we closed in on the final mile, and eventually I was even able to pass the two women that had previously seemed untouchable. Take that, MediumPaceVille! Slowburg is out to annex you!
The end of the race was three-quarters of a lap around the school's track, which was just awesome. Almost as awesome as running into the school's parking lot and passing a volunteer who said, "Good job, you're almost there! Great stride!" He probably says that to all of the sweaty and disheveled novice runners, but he sounded like he really meant it when he said it to me. I was going to stop and hug him, but you know; I was running a race, and all. Once you get to the track, you have no choice but to continue running, because who stops and walks on the track?? No. You must come into the finish like you mean it, which I did. And then I gratefully stopped and guzzled some water.
My finish, however, was nothing compared to my pal H's. I was anxiously awaiting her arrival, concerned about whether her race had gone well this time, or if it had been as painful as the Komen race. A few minutes after I finished, though, I saw her come breezing onto the track. When she reached the straightaway leading up to the finish line, homegirl started SPRINTING. It was beautiful. I yelled her name as she streaked across the finish line, and then she collapsed onto the grass and didn't speak for awhile.
In the end, I finished in about 48:00, right on track with my steady pace. H finished around 53:00, I think. My enthusiasm over having beaten my goal faded a bit when the awards ceremony started and I realized that I would have to quite literally cut my time in half if I ever want to win anything. Well, that's not entirely true. I think the winner of the female 70+ age group finished in about 46:00. So it's either cut my time in half, or continue training for the next 50 years and bide my time until my competitors slow down enough that I can overtake them. I don't mind, I'm patient. In this decade, though, I placed 638 out of 686 overall (in your face, 50 people slower than me) (except you, H, sorry) and 40 out of 51 in females ages 25-29. And I'm pretty damn pleased about it.
In addition to the glory of being the fastest of the slow, we also got these commemorative race socks:
And then we (H and I and our biggest cheerleader E) went to see fireworks and eat a picnic dinner and drink juicebox wine.
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