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Run Through the Lavender 5K

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Location:

Orem,UT,USA

Member Since:

Apr 03, 2006

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Age Division Winner

Running Accomplishments:

HS/COLLEGE:
mile: 4:56, 2 mile: 10:21 (1978)
marathon: 2:52 (St. George 1982)
OLD MAN (20+ years later):
5K: 19:53 (Nestle/Art City Days 5K 2007)
10K: 39:55 (Spectrum 10K 2008)
half marathon: 1:26 (Hobble Creek 2008)
marathon: 3:07 (St. George 2007)

Short-Term Running Goals:

Get back to a BQ marathon time (currently 3:40).

Long-Term Running Goals:

Have fun running, keep fit, and fight middle age spread. Run consistently and injury free. Maintain a healthy balance between running and other life priorities. Encourage my ever-aging running buddies to keep running so we can continue to share runs on the trail instead of rocking chairs.

Personal:

Blessed to be married to Karen for 30 years. We have six children (4 daughters/2 sons) ages 16 to 30, and one wonderful granddaughter.

Favorite Blogs:

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Miles:This week: 0.00 Month: 0.00 Year: 0.00
Altra Instinct 1.5 Lifetime Miles: 83.50
Altra Lone Peak 1.5 Lifetime Miles: 21.80
Saucony Guide 7 Blue 2 Lifetime Miles: 376.95
Saucony Fastwitch 6 Lifetime Miles: 200.05
Saucony Guide 7 Black 1 Lifetime Miles: 271.15
Race: Run Through the Lavender 5K (3.1 Miles) 00:21:04, Place overall: 17, Place in age division: 2
Easy MilesThreshold MilesMarathon Pace MilesTrack speed mileageHill mileageTotal
2.003.100.000.000.005.10

Well, at the prompting of my daughter (who was helping with Lavender Days at Young Living Lavender Farms this year) I ran in the Run Through the Lavender 5K for the first time, and maybe for the last time. It's not much fun running races no one else is interested in running. It's a lot more fun to have buddies running. I did bump into a former co-worker and my dentist's hygienist who ran the race, but it's not the same has being with my running buddies.

And the course, to me at least, is difficult. The course is almost entirely on dirt roads that run through the lavender fields. It is kind of cool to be able to have an unobstructed view of almost the entire course...the winners way up ahead and the masses coming behind...but most of the first half of the course is uphill. I warmed up well, a couple of miles on the course, and felt good at the start. Right from the start it felt hard to breath, but I chalked that up to starting fast and running uphill. I couldn't generate much speed on the gradual but steady uphill. When I finally got to the downhill I didn't have enough zip left to make up for the slowness on the uphill. Most of the last mile I had increased difficulty breathing. I was breathing every step and couldn't seem to take a deep breath. My chest felt tight and I had a pretty sharp pain in my back. I pushed through it as well as I could to the finish. I recovered very quickly after the race and felt great.

My splits were: 6:54, 6:51, 6:45, 0.11 in 32.96 (5:13/mi) Total 21:04 (6:46/mi)

I finished 17th among the men, 2nd in my division, and got chicked by two ladies.

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I took a hard shoulder to my chest playing basketball. It didn't bother me during the Wasatch Back Relay, but I must have done something to aggravate it this week because it's been sore the last 3 or 4 days. It feels tight, it's hard to take a deep breath, and if I twist or stretch wrong it hurts. During this race my legs felt pretty good but breathing was difficult, very difficult near the end. I'm sure I'll be fine in the standard 4-6 weeks.

The awards ceremony was on a stage under a big tent with enough chairs for all of the runners. That was nice. The awards ceremony was done very well, except that they ran out of medals by the time they got to us older guys. At first they just gave me a 2nd place AD medal with a woman on it (which I didn't really want), but later they took the bib numbers of the winners and said they would send us the correct medals.

I was a little disappointed to finish in 21:04, and a little disappointed that I didn't win the 45-49 age division. They were giving nice Lavender wreaths to the AD winners. A time of 22:00 won the 45-49 division last year, but the man that beat me was only 44 last year. Local Ken Richens of Nephi ran it in 19:55 last year and 20:03 this year. I talked with him after the race. He ran St. George in 2:58 last year (to my 3:07). I would have taken 1st place in any of the other men's divisions age 35 or higher. Why did Ken have to be in my division this year? Oh well.

Probably the highlight of the race for me was waiting for the race to start. I started chatting with a young runner from Timpview and the guy from RunnerCard that was waiting to start the clock when the race started. I told him I liked races timed by RunnerCard (because I do). I then asked if the company wasn't run by Doug Padilla. He said yes, and introduced himself to me. He was Doug Padilla. The race started 10 minutes late so we had some time to talk. I told him I thought he had a cool job. He said they don't make a lot of money, but it keeps him involved in running and going to races. We talked about the challenge of timing the Wasatch Back Relay last week...long start, long finish. He was at BYU roughly the same years I was. As a missionary in Barcelona, Spain between 1979 and 1981 I remembered taking luggage (didn't arrive with their flight) to a couple of new missionaries who had just arrived. I remembered one was a big name runner from BYU. I thought I remembered it being Ed Eyestone, but I wasn't sure. Doug served in El Salvador, but confirmed that Ed Eyestone served in Barcelona about that time. It would have been cool to serve with Elder Eyestone, but I only saw him that one time before I headed home. At one point I asked the TimpView runner what his goal was and he said around 17:00. I said that I wished I could run 17:00 instead of 20:00. After a second Doug looked at me and said, sounding a bit surprised, "You run 20:00?" I don't know if it was admiration or disbelief. I choose to not be offended, so I'll take it as a compliment.

The raffle had some good prizes, including a couple of iPods, but I didn't win this time. After showering and eating breakfast back at my parents' home in Nephi, Karen and our two youngest girls hit Lavender Days for a few hours. We had low expectations, but ended up having a fun time. We ate snow cones, watched a couple of western shows, watched professional jousting at noon (Tiffany joined us as it was during her lunch break), shot arrows and threw axes, rode a couple of medieval rides, listened to a cool little old lady (named LaRue I think) play her accordion, and saw some cool snakes at the tail end of the reptile show. We stopped in Springville at DQ for Dilly bars and Blizzards on the drive home. Add all that to dinner out with my parents the night before (they never brought my dad's food and then messed up the check so badly we finally decided to alter the bill so we didn't cheat them out of 10 bucks and/or risk the waitress getting into trouble) and to the fact that we beat my parents 2 out of 3 games of Cribbage, and it was a pretty great trip.

Comments
From Tom on Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 17:30:30

Great race report Paul. Sounds like a good effort on a slow course and a great weekend with family. I would imagine a bit of lingering fatigue from WBR slowed you down a bit as well.

Nice job on the 2nd place AD, perhaps you'll get a chance to compete against the local again next year.

From Brent on Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 17:46:55

Nice race, dirt roads are always tough, 100 commando points for the second in age Div. Doug is a great person.

Stay Kool, b of BS Rools out

From Lybi on Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 14:39:06

Fun pre and post race! Sorry about your chest tightness...I wonder what happened. Maybe your diaphram is bruised or strained or something. I am still mighty impressed with your time, and I think that Doug was too.

I've been curios about the Lavendar run. Is it really fragrant and beautiful? (Long uphill cancels out a beautiful scent in a race, though, imho.)

From Paul T on Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 15:48:02

My memories are of dirt roads, effort, and discomfort, not beauty and fragrance. I couldn't really smell the fragrance of the lavender at all, and I was trying hard to get as much air as I could. Of course I was gasping it in through my mouth, not letting it gently waft past the olfactory receptors of my nose. I don't think this year is representative however. Lavender Days generally celebrate the lavender harvest, but later in the day at one of the venues I heard the owner of Lavender Farms say that nature hadn't cooperated this year and the lavender wasn't ready to harvest yet. Still, overall I was glad I did the race, which was pretty well managed, and we enjoyed Lavender Days much more than we thought we would.

From Kim on Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 16:21:29

Fun time! Tom and I are going to have to take the kids to Lavendar Days next year!

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