8th Annual Forever Friends 5K results

The weather was perfect for a run, sunny and in the mid 70's with no wind. Elco High school resides in Myerstown on the eastern end of Lebanon county and I live in the westernmost portion of the county. It took a little over a half hour to get to the high school for this 1 PM starting time run. It was as bear finding the school because it's located nearly a mile off of route 501 and not visible from the road. There were no signs on route 501 at the turnoff for the school. I was hoping for a 'Home of the Elco Raiders' sign somewhere with an arrow pointing down Elco road. I guess they figure every who needs to know where the high school is located already knows the location.

Upon arriving around 12:15 I was impressed by the sheer enormity of the high school campus. The school is located on acres and acres of fields surrounded by fields. I wrestled and played football in high school and have no recollection of ever traveling to the Elco school. I was also impressed by the turnout for this event. This event is definitely held in high regards by the Myerstown community.

The event headquarters was located near the entrance of the football stadium. I began to stretch and warm up on the synthetic track circling the stadium and found my groin pull was not going to cooperate fully. I had to alter my stride to minimize the groin pain. As with most runners, I land with my heels first. I had to alter my stride by landing on the extreme outer edge of my left heel, in a bow-legged fashion. This resulted in a unique post race calf strain due to my altered gait.

The woman running the event, Alice Wagner, had lost her son several years ago and gave an emotional pre-race address to the runners thanking them for participating. I can't imagine losing one of my sons. While I believe psychologists would advocate moving on after such a tragic event, in reality, I would find it difficult to ever fully heal from a loved one's death.

This run contained an interesting mix of runners and walkers for this 5K race. There was a substantial walking contingency for this run. It did not detract from the race in any way. I learned from my last race in Hershey to move up in the front tier of runners at the starting line to avoid playing bumper pool with slower runners at the beginning of the run.

The starter's gun went off around 1:15 PM and I proceeded to run like a rabbit with his tail on fire for the first half kilometer. I had set up my watch to record ten split times, at half kilometer intervals. I ran a 2:00 even pace for my first recorded split time. It's a matter of simple math to take ten 0.5K splits at 2 minutes each to finish with a 5K time of 20 minutes.

I have a major problem at this point in the race already. I can't run a 2 minute half kilometer split ten times consecutively. It was an awesome feeling though to be running with the leaders for what amounted to be a distance of about one lap around a running track.

I had to pull back and put on the brakes to conserve energy. I ran a 7:05 first mile. Again, a great split for me, but at my current fitness level, not sustainable. I reached he second mile at 15:02, logging a 7:57 second mile pace. My last mile pace was 8:26. While I am disappointed my pace drops off so precipitously as I run, I view this as potential for improvement next year if I train harder.

I finished with an official time of 23:41, a very good time for myself. I finished 26th out of 211 runners & walkers. By my Garmin GPS Forerunner watch, the race route was only 4.87 kilometers long. My actual 5K time would have been slightly over 24 minutes if the race was exactly five kilometers long. My bib number for this race was #21 and they used the RoadID.com bibs for this race.

It was a fun day to run as summer is coming to a close and fall is on the doorstep. I was thankful for being able to finish and just generally being in condition to participate in these events this year.

My groin injury was re-aggravated. I stretched for nearly a half hour after the race, took several ibuprofen tablets, and iced the area later that evening. I need to recover quickly in order to be ready for a two mile race this Saturday in Harrisburg.