My running goals for the rest of 2010 have been kind of hazy since the half marathon, but I did want to do some more racing before winter really set in. Since I haven’t raced for the most part since high school I want to establish some benchmark times going into 2011 that I can work on improving. With that in mind I decided to run the Westerville Game Day 5k on November 20th, a race that benefits the Westerville Central cross country team. It’s the kind of fund raiser I can really get behind since I spent a couple of years coaching cross country and know how tough money can be with that sort of thing.

Saturday morning was a little cold, but not too bad. The real surprise was the fog. It was so dense that driving to the race was a little nerve wracking because traffic lights didn’t appear until I was seemingly on top of them. Once I got there though I found out my fears of being late had been unfounded, because the race had been pushed back 15 minutes.

The highlight of the day for me was the kid’s race. Carter took part in his first one ever, and even though he was easily two years younger than the youngest kids in the race he finished the half mile like a champ. I was very proud, and I’m looking forward to he and (eventually) Max doing lots of these kids fun runs. They seem like a great, low pressure way to get them interested in running. Carter enjoyed it so much he started pulling Alli along the course wanting to do it again while I was out running! He also received a small plastic football for finishing, which as anyone who knows Carter would attest, could not
have been a more fitting prize.

I was pretty happy with my race for the most part. I’m not worrying too much about goals in these 2010 races, still mostly just trying to set baselines for 2011 improvement as I continue to lose weight. I was a little bummed knowing I was likely to post a personal worst, so I decided to shoot for a soft time goal in the 26′s which would just avoid that. Early on in the race with the help of my Garmin I identified a few runners who seemed to be running in the 8-8:30 range I was looking to sit at, and stuck with one gentleman who was wearing an Air Force Marathon t-shirt. We ran almost the entire race side by side which was a tremendous help in pacing. We talked a little bit after the race (his name was Jamie Burrier, so hi Jamie if you’re ever Googling yourself and come across this) and found that we had similar stories, running to lose weight, and really coming to enjoy it, etc.

The main thing I took away from this race was how good it felt running fairly even splits. In high school I ran every race as stupidly as possible, basically going out as fast as I could and then slowing down over the course of the race. I’m enjoying racing like this quite a bit better, still feels like a good effort but without the horrible pain I remember from high school. It’s possible that pain will come back as I get faster, but we’ll see.

Mile Splits:

1: 8:16
2: 8:32
3: 8:39
.1: 0.44 – 7:47 pace
26:38 171/433 and 8/11 AG