Happy Thanksgiving!
Wow, I'm impressed, Corvallis. On a cold, but not raining, Thanksgiving morning, at the early hour of 8am, over 500 runners braved the elements and toed the line for the OAC Turkey Trot 5k and 10k. Nice work!
Let's get right to the action!
So the entire R's family ran this one. Everyone decided to run the 5k. Payton and I wanted to see how fast we could go and Carson and Jen and Jen's Knees wanted to see if they could finish in front of someone.
Missions accomplished!
The 10k was supposed to take off at 8am sharp, but because of the huge crowds (unexpected?), they started about 10 minutes late. Only about 75 or so people in that race. Check out the results right here.
And the 5k. A whopping 446 runners for this one. Nice.
Somehow, this little Corvallis 5k was the first race I've done with the disposable chips that are attached to the race number itself. Seemed to work well. My online results looked to be correct and they got them up super-fast. I like it.
So my last words to Payton before the start gun were, "don't go out too fast. I'll check my watch and let you know how we're doing." Holy moly, can you say "foreshadowing?"
You'd think after 25 years of running competitive road races, I would know how to pace myself in a race. That I would know how to NOT go out too fast in any length race, even a 5k.
You'd be wrong.
See, I have this new problem. I'm actually in decent shape. Not amazing shape, but decent. I can run fast for short bursts and not pass out. And that's a problem. After we had gone around the first two corners (and there are a lot of corners on this course), I knew we were going sort of fast, but I didn't check my watch because I didn't feel that bad. When I did check my watch after about a half-mile and we were well under a 7:00/mile pace, I knew we were just being silly. There's no way Payton or I can keep up that pace for even a 5k. I told him to slow down and tried to notch it back myself, but we still hit the first mile at 7:17. Not that much faster than I was hoping for the first mile, but it was only because we had slowed up considerably after the first half-mile. I knew there would be a price to pay later.
The second mile was at about the pace I was looking for, 7:26, but by the end of that mile, I was starting to feel a bit tired. And my stomach. Oof. If there had been a Honey Bucket sitting around, I would have been in there without a second thought. That's not a good thing in a short, little 5k, but something was just not sitting right. The second mile was also where I got a reminder that runners are horrible at paying attention while they're racing. We were coming up to an intersection. We were clearly turning left. There were runners just in front of us turning left. You could see them going around the corner. There were also 10k runners coming from the left and turning left up ahead of us on the same street we were currently on. It was all pretty clear.
The two runners just in front of me didn't turn left. Didn't even think about it. They just kept going straight, right into the back end of the 10k pack. I yelled, "Turn! Turn!" and they got it back around fairly quickly. It always amazes me. People just get locked in and don't look around at what's going on.
So, mile three. Stomach not right. Lungs feeling that first half-mile a bit. Definitely slowing down a bit: 7:41. Still, I headed into the Linus Pauling Middle School track looking like I had a pretty fair shot at breaking my Master's 5k PR of 23:11. Just had to get around one lap of the track to the finish. No problem.
Holy crap, that was a long lap. As Maxwell Smart would say, "missed it by that much." A 23:18 - seven seconds off the PR. I wish I had felt a bit better in the second half of that race, because you won't find a flatter 5k in Corvallis. An total elevation gain of six feet for the race. Shoot-fire. Check the results here. I did manage to snag 8th place in Masters and 29th overall in a slow T-Day crowd, so that's not too bad. Payton did quite well with a 3rd place out of 33 runners in his age group, and 67th overall. And Carson and Jen did, in fact, beat a few people, so it's all good!
Ah well. I guess the 5k record will have to wait for number 28 in the EPIC schedule: the OAC Holiday Multisport Reverse Aquathlon. Pow! See you there.
Here's the shirt. Like most Turkey Trot races, it has a cute cartoon Turkey. I mean, that's almost a guarantee, right? And it's white, so I've got no issues with it.
One left. See you on December 17th.
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