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Day 281- RR from weekend +Happy Halloween! (No trick-or-treating in this town thanks to Sandy! Postponed until Monday.)
RR- On Sunday, 10/28 I ran the JDRF 5K in Philly. I had signed up for this race months ago and almost forgot about it. It was one of the largest I have run in my short running career. So I have been nursing my foot for the past few weeks and not doing my normal training mileage and we were on red alert for the arrival of Sandy.
Night before the race: It was raining at my home. It rained hard off and on all night.
Morning of the race: made plans to leave my home around 7:00 am, we live about 30 mins away from where the race was being held. When I woke up at 5:30am it was still raining and my wife was leaving for her work. We discussed me not going and not risking more pain in my foot from running in the rain. So, I go back to sleep and wake up at 6:45 only to see a text from my wife saying it was not raining at her work (not far from race location) and I should go. So I jump out of bed, check the weather radar online and jump in the shower. I rush around the house get my stuff together, pack tons of cloths and towels just incase it does rain. I had no clue what the temperatures were going to be so I packed extra shirts to layer up. Ate my 3 hard boiled eggs and made my large travel coffee and headed out the door at 7:35am (Race starts at 8:30am!) On the ride I pinned my bib on my shirt (picked it up the day before to save time), drank my coffee, popped some pain pills and ate some dried fruit. The race is in the center of Philly and they warned us about parking so I just decided to park in a garage rather than find a place on the street. I got into Philly at 8:05am and pulled into the first garage near the race, (Did not bother to check rates! $20 for 3 hrs!). Grabbed what I thought I needed and ran to the closest exit only to find it went nowhere. I ended up taking a small towel, my phone, armband and earphones. I was wearing a long sleeve tech shirt and felt warm enough in the garage so I was off. I had to go to the other end of the garage to find the exit. I finally ended up on the street and heading towards the race location. I was about 5 blocks away (time: 8:15am). As I am walking/jogging I see a million empty parking spots on the street and curse myself for not just looking for a few mins for on street parking (cost about $3 for 3 hrs). As I approach the race location I start to see how big this event is! It is huge! There are a row of spot-a-pots so I decide I better get it over and jump in and take my pre-race piss. I get to where I think the race starts (8:28am) to only find out they are way behind and not going to start for another 15mins, it is about then that I realize I am still wearing my glasses. I don’t wear my glasses when I run, they bug me and if I sweat a lot they get messy quick (I am bald and sweat rolls right down my head onto my glasses). So I start looking around for a place to hide them during the race. I find a row of bushes and tuck them in there hoping they will be there when I come back. I hang my towel on a nearby bush to leave it there during the race (just a trick I learned from a buddy about not having a place to check stuff. If it is there when you get back, great! If not, who cares….) so I finally figure out that the race does not start right where I am and about 400yds down the road so I wonder over there to wait.
As I am waiting I realize that I never drank any water to get rid of the coffee/creamer/cottonmouth issue. So I start looking for water…. Nothing. I decide if it bothers me during the race I will just grab water at a water stop. They give us the warning so I head over to line-up and decide to move up near the front about 3-4 feet back from the start. They had a countdown clock and that helped greatly. The race starts and I am off.
I pass a few folks and few folks pass me, the road is nice and wide so no big deal. I am cruising along and my 3 min pace time comes over my phone and I am flying, but I feel good so I don’t back off. I come up to the first water stop (1/2 mile in) and I pass it, they had small cups of water and I thought maybe the next one. So I get to the 1 mile mark and I am starting to feel it so I back off a little but I am in a rhythm so not much. There is another water stop coming up and I am really thinking about getting one at this point to clear my cottonmouth, as I come up to it I see it is full size water bottles and think to myself ‘are they crazy?’ so I pass on water once again. At this point I see the leaders coming back towards us as the course was an out and back. I then see the turnaround point and feel like it came too soon. (BTW, this whole time I know I am killing it from my MMR App on my phone!) I get to the turn around and pick up my speed again. At about the 2 mile mark a girl that I past comes up and passes me, but I quickly catch up to her and pace off her for a little while. We go past the water station with the water bottles and see the runners we are doubling back on grabbing them taking one swig and ‘cur-pluck’ into the trash can or flying all over the road as they throw them to the side, what a waste. The Waka, Waka song comes on my play list and I find myself wanting to dance as I run so I just end up laughing and smiling for a few minutes (when this song comes on when I run with my wife I do dance down the road because her pace is so much slower), I wonder what the runners coming towards me thought as this bald middle aged man is laughing and smiling big? After that song I have my ‘gottta get it done’ song come on, I know to beat my PR I have to finish well before this song is over. The song is ‘Greyhound’ by Swedish House Mafia, if you know the song you know it is a race song and has a build-up till it kicks in, about 40sec? When it kicked in, I put it in gear and took off, I think the girl I was pacing with thought I was on something. I kind of jumped up and bolted for the next ¼ mile and let off a little, by this time I saw the finish line and after 100yds of catching my breath I dropped the hammer one more time and then I saw the clock, it was 23:50. That is all it took, I found another gear, I was going to finish under 24:00, I passed the clock at 23:58! I felt so full of energy and knew right away I held back to much because I felt so good.
Results: Chip time 23:55 and new PR! (Previous PR: 24:56)
Overall: 27th out of 350+
Overall Male: 21st
Age Group and shocker: 7th (How in the hell do you come in 21st male and 7th in age group? Any other race I would have run, I would have been in top 3 for age group!)
Overall I am very happy that I decided to run. It was a real shocker on the PR, I knew I was going to set a new one, but not by a minute! It makes me want to train harder to get down a little lower next time. It sucks that I am cutting back on my training because of this foot injury. I can’t wait for the next race, I am running the Philly Lemon Run on the 11th, it should be another big one. I hope to be back up to full training next week, I did run today with little pain.
After getting settled down after the race I headed back over to find my towel was still there and my glasses. By this time the other big event of the day was getting close, it was the JDRF Philly Walk. There had to be a couple thousand walkers there. I was impressed with the size of some of the teams and how organized they were. When I do one of these big events again (like the Lemon Run) I want to join a team just to see what it is like.
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