The Long Run

Great day for a race.  This is a nice course put on by the local Rotary Club with a small-town race feeling, even though it is just around the corner from a row of restaurant and hotel chains.  This is our 4th year running it (although just my 3rdt time as I was out of town last year).

We all signed up for the 5K.  Before the race, I warmed up with the boys for about 0.4 miles while Jenny was doing a longer warm up.  It was right about 60° at the start with a little bit of wind but nothing too awful.  There were lots of people that we knew.  My friend Eric was there as he had paced his daughter in the 1 mile race and decided to just jog the 5k.

We were lined up at the starting line and I saw Eric next to us.  Since I was pretty sure that Andy was going to pull ahead and I would stay with Thomas, I asked Eric if he wouldn't mind running with Andy.  Andy often ends up running by himself when we race together, but it was nice to know there would be someone with him.  We all started out together and got off to a pretty good pace (8:30ish).  After about a mile Andy and started to pull away from us and I stayed with Thomas.  Thomas had been trying pretty hard to keep up with his older brother and I was afraid we had gone out too fast.  As we were getting near the turnaround we could see Andy and Eric coming the other way with a pretty good lead.

Thomas had started to slow down and bit and was complaining about not wanting to run, but it was actually not nearly as bad as in other races.  After we were a little more than half way, Thomas seemed to perk up a bit and was running a little bit stronger.   The sun came out and it actually felt hot for a short time.  As we approached the last turn, there was a man calling out the time.  I think he said about 27:45.  With about 0.2 miles left to go I knew we could make it under 30 minutes, which would beat his old PR of 30:35.

Finally with just 0.1 left to go I told Thomas to kick it in and he did.  He took off so fast I had trouble matching his acceleration.  The finish line crowd loved it and were cheering him on.

Caught back up with Jenny and Andy and found that they both had nice PRs -

Jenny - 21:49

Andy - 25:20  (a 3 minute PR!)

Thomas ended up with 1st place in his age division, Jenny 2nd place, and Andy 4th place (they give awards 4 deep at this race).  The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd boys in Andy's age division (10-14) were all at least a foot taller than Andy, pretty tough division for an 11 year old to be running in.