And Now for the Hardware

This is the final weekend of the Lancaster Festival, in which Tara is violining, and one of the attractions of the festival is the 5K race. I signed up for it and this morning headed downtown for the competition.

It was a beautiful morning for a race - not too hot, slightly overcast, slightly breezy... I have modified my race plans to not wear sunglasses (they just bother me during the race) and to ignore water stops (I never need to drink during a 6 mile training run; why would I need a drink in a race?).

Anyway, the race started out well - there was a small group of people who crowded to the front to start who didn't have any business being there (one said, "I just don't want to be last the whole race."). Sorry, but if your goal is just to finish, step back and let someone who is going to run out fast, well, run out fast! I slipped between two of them at the start and had free running from there out.

Talk about free running - I quickly realized that I was in the "in-between." The fast runners went out in front of me and the slow runners lagged behind me, and I was all by myself.

It was a nice course, down the road and onto a paved trail. We followed the trail for most of the race, going off trail through the grass at the turn-around, but then back onto the trail. In fact, the turn around loop was so quick that all of a sudden I realized that we were into the homestretch and back onto the road.

It was nice (again) having Tara and the boys there to cheer me on toward the end of the race. Andrew even came running out toward me happily cheering, and Jonathan was at the side wearing my race t-shirt (huge on him, of course).

My final time was 21:07, with which I was pretty happy. I also picked up a door prize (a water bottle - actually I got two, but I gave one to Tara's fellow violinist Cal), and I was 3rd in my age group, so I got a plaque!