Monday, September 22, 2008

Running is Fun!

Hero's Run 5k ---  22.04 (yeah, you read that right)   6th Place overall, 1st place 35-39, Personal Record by 1.09.  I will take the Esther approach and say I was running against the virtual SB.

Reality was, I was racing the first place girl.  She had me for about 1 mile, than I passed her, then she put on surge at the end that I was able to hold off, I could hear the foot steps.  She less than 2 seconds behind me.

This was a small race (less than 100), more walkers than runners.  It was as flat as a pancake.  It was held on a Rails to Trails along a river.  Also, they had a 15km race going on at the same time.  I recognized about 4 guys who would have beat me if they had done the 5 km race.

At my current improvement rate, if I run three more races I will go under 20 minutes :).  

This is a fun race.  The proceeds go to a scholarship fund in honor of the first two Greene County, PA residents that were killed in the Iraq war.  The mom & dad of both young men have walked both years.  They encourage everyone as you pass them after the turn around.

They give military water bottles to the top three male & female, with the placing information painted on it.  Then the age groupers get a old rail spike for a trophy.  They also gave away some nice door prices.  

The kid who won the 5k race, he ran about a 19 flat, so the competition was not super intense.  He also was drawn for the grand prize on the raffle, which was two tickets to any where South West Airlines flies.  I had been talking to his mom & dad while the rest of the award ceremony was going on.  His mom was in tears as her sons name was pulled.  Here, the boy does some cyberspace school and the state of WV locks him out of high school athletics because of this.  He is a 9th grader, so he is doing a 5k race every Saturday to have some form of training and program in case WV schools change their mind.  They report the times back to the would be high school coach, who I think is not very happy this kid has been locked out, lots of potential.  His mom was very excited, of course I hope he chooses his mom to accompany him on the trip. 

I think I talked them into doing the Waynesburg Homecoming race in three weeks.  Told them about all the goodies, but they might be spoiled after winning airplane tickets. 

6 comments:

catmarlson said...

Phew! That is one sweet run!
I guess now I get to chase Virtual Craig.
Very, very cool. Congrats!

esther said...

craig that is awesome! what a great time, and way to chase down the virtual sb! did you notice the virtual e trailing minutes behind..

silent_scream said...

nice job, Craig! what a great pace!

m said...

Great job Craig! The SB better sign up for a 5k soon so he can get out there and chase your time.

CSquared said...

I have had a paradigm shift on running due to this article.

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-244-259-11738-0,00.html#

I started using this theory this year for 5K's. I can't think about this during tri's because it hurts too much. I use to start out slower and couldn't make up time. Now I try to gain time in the beginning and hold on.

Jim said...

Makes sense! Good 5k time by the way! The other thing that article does not address is,"Is there a training effect due to the training/racing at fast paces?"

Eyestone is one of the better columnists that RW has since Owen Anderson left years ago. Most others write about fluff, not science.

Either way it is a benefit.