Today was a perfect day to race. I chose to run the pink booby race 10K, as the 5K featured lots of dogs, strollers, people tied together like centipedes, army men marching behind a flag, and all sorts of assorted road clogging pink mayhem. There were approximately 400 people in the 5K, and only 60 in the 10K. There were all sorts of pink boob shirts with different slogans, my favorite being "Saving Second Base". Probably 3 of 4 participants were women. Lot of pretty girls in those almost see thru boy shorts........damn distracting.....Anyway, my goal was to try and complete the 10K under an hour, so below 6 minute per kilometer pace. My garmin was set on kilometer pace on top, and total kilometers on bottom. The course started uphill on geothermal road for approximately two kilometers. I tried to hold back and crested the top with a pace of 6:24. After running downhill for two kilometers, I was at 6:04. The rest of the course was fairly flat and followed the old senior games course. By 8 kilometers, I was happily on 5:54 pace and felt pretty comfortable about getting in under an hour. The weather was perfect....started out at 56 degrees, and ended around 70. When I saw the chute coming, I new something was wrong. I went thru the pink arch at 53:34, and looking at my garmin, it said that we had only covered 9.06 kilometers, or around 6 tenths of a mile short. They separated runners in the chute by moving the 10K runners to the right. As I watched them hand write the runners numbers and their time, I realized that for a race in it's 7th incarnation, they are certainly not ready for prime time. There was only one guy in the 10K besides me who looked old, and I talked to him after the race and he turned out to be 48 (not aging very well!). When I went back to the scorers table, I found out that they were only giving out medals to the first two men and women in the 10K race, so when they put "Awards" on the flyer, they were a bit deceptive. So, beautiful day, I stayed on pace as hoped, but not a race that I would ever do again. I have so few left in me, they have to at least have ten year age groups.
After the race, my friend Matt from run culture gave me a card for 20% off, so I headed to old downtown to see if the store had two shoes I wanted to try on. When I got there, the street was closed for a street fair, so after I bought a much need new pair of shoes (I kid, I now have 15 pairs!), I picked up a lb. of coffee from a new coffee roaster who had a display in front of their shop, a large jar of sour cherry jam from a family that goes all over New Mexico selling jams and jellies, and some roasted and pickled jalapenos that are supposed to be medium hot. Followed that up with some grocery shopping at Tucan bye the university, and headed home. Now I am laying on the couch watching Notre Dame (come on Stanford!), sucking some left over coffee, and contemplating what side dish to serve my bride for dinner to go along with the caribbean crusted mahi mahi I bought at Tucan.....maybe soy and ginger rice?
No comments:
Post a Comment