Saturday, May 14, 2016

World Record...Pink Slip



Wearing a pink shirt for a good cause and showing support for a wonderful friend, no problem. Braving low 40's and probably closer to 30's for a race, heck yeah! That's perfect for me and isn't sacrificing anything! Letting a stranger spray paint my head pink...now that's commitment!

Today is the Race for the Cure. Most races, there is uneasiness worried about times, distance, any number of things. None of that today, but it was a different and somber start to the race as moments before speakers spoke of losses from that awful c word. Not exactly a raw raw type start, instead we'll call it a calm start.

As the National Anthem played, gazed at the biker in orange and found myself thankful they had a bike official for this course. I did research the route, for twenty seconds, and had a vague idea, but it had more turns than I wanted to put thought into. Yeah, this is an omen, you can guess where this is going.

F-yooooooou (c word) goes the gun. Out the ball field we go. It wasn't too long before I was probably in fifth. While hardly what I'd called 5K trained, certainly wasn't going to set any records, curious to know where my 5K speed is. Soon the lead biker and runner are headed back, strange. Runner logic kicked in and though I thought it was odd, who am I to judge, so I turned where they did. In my head, I figured the game plan was to loop this section again, then we'd be sent out further on the trail. Sure enough, looped a small section again, before a volunteer enthusiastically told us almost done and pointed us into the ball field. Okay, this isn't right. At this point the guy in front of me and I started chatting about something is really wrong with this. As we entered the stadium, watched the lead runner cross the line. Yup, wrong. Checked my watch and hadn't even hit two miles yet. To cross or not to cross, that is the question! We ended up kind of laughing and crossing, once across, told him was might as well keep going and get our full distance in. So, back out the stadium we went.

Back on the course, it was obvious where the mistake was made. Instead of staying on the trail and crossing a bridge, the lead biker turned at a cone that was just before that bridge. As we cross the bridge and took a small turn, there was a water tent with a few very confused volunteers. My comment passing them, "traffic is going to be very lite today". We reached the official turn around spot, a cone, go figure, On the way past the water tent again, "Think we'll be the last runners you see today too".

I've wanted to break into the 19's for a 5K since I started and it took tons of work to finally pull it off. Like I said, haven't put any kind of 5K training in for a long time, well looking at the final results, 12:15! Going from 20's 19's crazy hard! Going from 19's to 12's, kind of easy! Later that day, I looked up what the world record for a 5K is, 12:37! Not only did I set a PR, but a WR! Crazy!

There *might* be an asterisk with those results. It really is unfortunate that something like this happened. Most people had fun with it, didn't seem to be anybody too upset about it. There will always be other 5K's, so it's not like it would be hard to find another one. Overall, it is for a good cause and fun, and for that, I'll put up with anything, even in pink. Now that lead biker, he might be getting the pink slip!  




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