Week 16 Wrapup

I had run pretty good times last week, and by Wednesday of this week had run 4 miles in a time of 9:35/mile. That's longer than a 5k, and faster than what I would need to run the 5k in less than half an hour. So, I essentially had already made my goal, and just needed to enter a race to make it official.

I found a race in Scottsdale on Saturday, and woke up at 5 to drive up there. The race was a charity event to benefit the MMRF (Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation). There was a wide cross-section of people there. A few were obviously serious runners, but most seemed to be there to support someone afflicted with cancer, or in memory of someone they lost to cancer. That kind of makes it more fun, but it's a little different environment than that you'd get from a race that only had serious competitors.

The course itself winds through Papago Park in Scottsdale. It's right next to the Phoenix Zoo. It's kind of in some foothills, and is really desert-y and hilly. I looked at a map of the course beforehand, and couldn't tell anything about hills or anything from that, so I really went in blind. As I ran, I could see that they had worked hard to try to bypass the hills by running along a path for a long way, then doubling back, and running along a canal for a mile. This lulled me into a false sense of security so that I wasn't quite prepared for all the hills they had saved up to throw into the last mile. The hills kind of hurt me at a time when I was already fatigued from running the first two miles. Fortunately, they didn't hurt my time much, since I had run pretty fast the previous two miles.

The official results have me down for a time of 28:33 (and a pace of 9:11 per mile). I beat the majority of other entrants; however, there were a lot of walkers there. There's no way real way to tell how I fared against the set of people who were intending to run the whole way. Still, I beat my goal handily and am now ready to move on to training for the 10k.

There were a lot of families there running together. In one group was a 6 year old boy who took off sprinting at the start, then stopped and stood there while the rest of his family caught up to him. As soon as they got close, he'd take off sprinting again. I must have been right there close to his family, because it usually happened that right when I got to the kid or overtook him, he'd take off again. It was really frustrating to know that I was giving it my all, and this 6 year old who was just toying around was blowing past me. It's true that he probably weighed 1/5 of my weight or less, but still. I don't recall ever passing him for good, but according to the results, he finished over a minute behind me. I'm hoping it's because he collapsed from exertion or got caught in a cactus or something, but he probably just kept back to finish with his family.

The results also show a 10 and 12 year old beating me, but I totally saw them cheat by cutting through and bypassing a really long switchback.