7:15am - Jenny went to do a 5K with one of her friends, so I slept in a little bit this morning, then went for a quick run, just a little over 3.5 miles @ 8:07 pace average. Tried to take it easy the rest of the day but had trouble relaxing waiting for the evening's race. 10:15pm - drove down to Dunedin to the race start area. I was on the verge of switching to the 5K which started at 11:25 instead of 12:15 for the 10K. It had been raining off and on during the day with scattered thunderstorms. This meant two possibilities for the 10K. If there was lightning they might cancel the race or postpone it until the threat moved on. Or, if no lightning but raining too hard they might shorten it to a five mile race because about 1 mile of the race runs through a park where the only lighting would be from luminaires lining the road. But, things were looking pretty good when I got there so I signed up for the 10K. The rain had stopped and besides I was mentally prepared more for the 10K than 5K. Warmed up with 2.1 easy miles (about 9:00 pace), running along part of the course and joining in with some of the 5Kers on their way back. I was able to check out one of the bridges, which has a steal grate deck for the drawbridge part of it. Tried to do some strides but there wasn't much pep in my legs. Although it was fairly cool for a July evening in Florida (76 degrees), the humidity was pretty high so I decided to ditch the singlet and run shirtless. I also had a hat with me which I was going to clip on a light for the dark park section. Decided against it and put the light in my pocket. (I never did end up using the light during the run but it sure did come in handy when using the port-o-lets!
12:00am - Saw Dixie near the starting area said hi to him a bit and waited for the race to start. Dixie had to run back to his car for something. I moved a little bit forward but not far enough as the crowd started to fill in. By the time the race started I was probably about 10 deep back. 12:15am - Race starts right on time and I had hoped to get onto a good pace right away, but first I had to get through the crowd. It was kind of fun but a little frustrating, too. Didn't take too long, maybe about a quarter mile to get to a thinner spot. By a half mile the crowd was pretty thin and definitely at 1 mile we were pretty spread out. I had no idea how many people were farther up ahead. At one mile we had just crossed over the first bridge, which was the bigger of the two and had the steel grate to run over. Felt pretty good and tried to make up some time from the slow start but managed to get the split down to 6:38 instead of the hoped for sub-6:30 or maybe better. I soon realized that running this late at night was a bit different, although I suppose not too much different from an early morning race except in this case you knew it wasn't going to get any lighter out. I was not able to easily, periodically glance at my garmin. And looking ahead and running to landmarks wasn't quite the same, but there were lots of people still to catch up to and that was the biggest benefit. At 2.5 miles, we entered into the park (Honeymoon Island State Park), where as expected it was very dark. Luminaires lined each side providing just enough light to know where the road was. At the 3 mile mark a volunteer was calling out splits, mine was 19:44. Happy to be under 20:00 with still some hopes of breaking 40:00 if I could negative split. Getting close to the turnaround I could see the other runners heading toward me. They had to get really close before you could see them. I tried to stay as far to the right as possible to make sure I didn't collide with anyone. After the turnaround, it was still dark but I could now see lights off in the distance. I saw some runners up ahead and concentrated on catching up. The way the light was it was hard to tell if it was a runner or just a trick of a shadow. I was thinking about how astronomers discover new planets. They look at stars and detect faint disturbances in the light. That is kind of what it was like to determine if someone was getting close. This section might have been the favorite part of the race for me. Not for how easy it was to run but because it was new and challenging. It went by pretty fast and I decided not to try and pull out my light. Mile 3.5, back out into the light and on the causeway. I could soon see the green traffic light at the drawbridge. It's amazing how bright that thing looked. About mile 5.5 a person was coming up behind me. I tried to fight to hold my position and surged ahead for a while then ran out of steam and went back to me old pace. The runner was very encouraging and told me to follow him and try and catch the guy ahead of me. I didn't hang on very well, but at least it distracted me and was my fastest mile. Saw the parking lot up ahead where the finish chute was, turned in and saw 40:xx on the clock, gave it all I had and crossed at 40:33. The guy that passed me told me great race and said he was able to catch the guy in front of him and was able to get 40:05. He must have been running pretty fast to pick up 28 seconds in a half mile.
Splits: 6:38, 6:27, 6:33, 6:31, 6:37, 6:26, 0.22@6:09
12:55 - 2:15am - grabbed some refreshments, chatted with some friends and waited for awards. The awards were 5 deep, so it took a while. Dixie did much better than hoped with 44:39. He had been having some not so great training runs recently but this really helped make up for any of that and should be great encouragement to continue on with 5 days/40 miles/ week. At first, they posted Dixie's age group place as 1st. I looked at the printout and noticed they had him with an "F" after his name, whoops! He talked to the timing people and they corrected the error. So, with the error fixed he was in 5th which still earned him a plaque. 2:57am - at home and in bed finally after driving home, and trying not to startle the dogs and wake up Jenny trying to sleep for her 20 mile run at 5:30 Here's the plaque they gave me:
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