I hesitated going to today’s race. My friends weren’t going. My husband couldn’t. I was tired. I had only run once in the last week. I had 2 parties to go to. But I went..
It was in Saratoga at the race track. After I picked up my packet, I bumped into someone (Paula) from my No Boundaries class. She has never raced alone and was anxious for company.
We headed to the starting point together. They had signs for 4 minute miler, 4 1/2 min., 5 min., etc. We hesitated to walk to see if there were signs for 11 minute mile runners (if they had a place for someone that slow?) since we would have to race an extra mile, we would be so far from the starting line.
We opted for some where in middle but still had a distance berfore we reached the starting line. The course was very flat and the weather was perfect. We talked the whole way and it was a very painless race.
Paula ran the Freihofer’s and finished behind me (about 100 runners back) and may have slowed me down to keep at her pace. But it was definitely more fun to run with someone.
I encouraged her her to sprint across the finish line and she remarked that she had never ran that fast. I looked up and saw 34:07 as the time and immediately thought: “How did I run so slow?”
me on the right crossing the finish line
I found out later thay although we had a chip, it only recorded your finish time and that your PR woiuld not be accurate unless you knew how long it took you to get to the starting line.
This made me feel better since I felt like I was running as fast or faster than my previous races.
Next time I may use my iPod to calcuate an accurate time.
It was fun. Next year I want to stay around and use my free ticket to the track.
There’s another race on August 16 called The Saratoga Derby. I signed up already!
Race Results: http://www.coolrunning.com/results/08/ny/Jul26_SilksS_set1.shtml (I came in 880 out 1002).
My First 5K and More... 