I enjoy running at the local races because it removes commuting anxiety from the day's agenda. This race was only fifteen minutes away. I was surprised at how many people entered this race. I believe the race organizers announced they had registered over 230 runners.. The number must have exceeded their estimate as their results board, where each runners bib tags are posted, only contained enough space for 150 runners.I arrived about an hour early for the 9 AM race. This was the only race I have run so far where I registered on race day. There is usually a five or ten dollar penalty or premium placed on the race fee if you wait until race day to to register. I was pleasantly surprised the T-shirt for this race was fashionable.
This was a trail race. It used a small section of the PA 'Rails to Trails' trail. I do not dislike racing on trails, but I am not currently a fan of trail racing. The race was also an 'up and back' race with a turnaround point. We ran up the trail halfway and then turned around at an orange cone and returned down the same path. You have runners going in opposing directions. While I did not witness any collisions, you did have to be careful when passing someone you did not encounter anyone going the opposite direction.
I ran this race by feel. I did not use my Garmin watch for pacing purposes. The primary reason is I can not read the watch easily while wearing sweaty and foggy sunglasses. That being said, I ran a 7:25 split for the 1st mile. How did that blistering 1st mile pace affect me ? I was so gassed by the the 3rd mile of the race, I had to stop not once, but twice. In any event, I beat my 25 minute goal, by running a 24:53. I finished 77th out of 237 racers.
As with most every race I have run this year, my GPS watch recorded a different race length than the advertised race length. In this case, my watch recorded a distance of 3.14 miles. My 3.1 (5K) split recorded by the Garmin watch was 24 minutes and 25 seconds.
I did not know immediately after the race why I had to stop running to catch my breathe. After the race, I was kicking myself in the butt mentally for stopping twice . I had this image of a drill sergeant in my head yelling at me for stopping. My personal jubilation for breaking 25 minutes was offset by the fact I probably left 20 seconds on the course because I had walked.
Once I uploaded data from my Garmin GPS watch to my PC and saw my first mile split it was evident why I tanked in the 3rd mile, again. My first mile split was 7:25, 2nd mile was 7:58 and the third mile split was 8:22. I did not leave anything in the tank for this race. I also paced myself extremely poorly.
As you finish a race, you are supposed to tear off the bottom portion of your race number and hand them to someone who collects them. There is a perforation line which facilitates tearing off the tag. This portion has your name, age and bib number. It's after the race and I am trying to find my name on the results board, and I notice a young teenaged girl hanging the tags. As I am standing there she drops a handful of the race tags and they lie scattered on the ground. She looks around, visibly terrified, not knowing what to do. An adult race organizer was standing next to her and says just pick them up and hang them. My name had already been hung at this point, but the race organizers need to stack the tags on a dowel rod or thick electrical wire to eliminate the dropped / mixed up tags issue.
There was a one mile fun run which began at 10:00 AM. Some kids ran by themselves and others ran with a parent. Each finisher received a blue ribbon for their efforts.
My takeaway from this race is I must learn to pace myself in the next two months for a race or I will be in a world of hurt for the 13.1 mile / 21.1 km half marathon race at the end of September.
I introduced myself to a man I had seen frequently at the Palmyra track coaching a group of kids to run. His name was Bill Stankowski and he had a high school aged son, named Connor running this race. Connor won his age group.
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