Parade Run

I ran the Parade Run two mile this evening. It didn't get as hot as they predicted but when I left the house at 1630 it was 88 with 58% humidity and a nice 10-12 mph wind ouf of the NNW and a heat index of 93 or 96, I don't really remember.

I warmes up with only a mile or so because I didn't want to get too hot and overheat with a half mile to go. The gun went off and I settled in behind David D. and Carl as I knew that one of them was going to crank out a good race. I had a bad case of nerves all day and just felt very ill at ease about today's race. Once I got about two minutes into it I felt it all go away.

The Bionic Woman parked herself off my right shoulder for about the first 3/4 of a mile and fell off the pace a bit. I let David get a lead on me as he was running crazy fast. At the mile he had about a 20 second lead on me. I can't remember if I actually said "shit" out loud or just thought it very forcefully. I hit the mile in about 5:57 or so and dumped a small Dixie cup of water on my head. I would have preferred a 30 gallon garbage can but every little bit helped today.

I used a downhill to my advantage to build up some momentum and started picking people off. I would look at my watch every few minutes and tell myself, "4 minutes to go, 2 minutes to go" until my goal of going under 12:00. I did that little trick most of the last 1200 meters and knew it was going to be close when I hit the gates to the State Fair. I sprinted up the cruel little uphill to the chute and clicked my watch, a tick late I think, with a time of 12:00.10 on the read-out.

I jogged to my car and back for an approxiamately mile and a half cool down and got back in time to see that they gave me an official time of 11:56.75 and 36th place. I think something went a little hinky in the scoring but I'm not going to complain. I'll take the 11:56.

I did end up catching David with a little over half a mile to go and when I did he must have crashed because he finished up in about 12:40. The Bionic Woman won the women's division with an official time of 12:20 but a watch time of 12:10. I got 5th in my age group but every single guy who beat me was at least two years younger than me. I bet they weren't up with their kid at 0400 and chasing him around all day too after taking him to the doctor's office to get the rash on his butt checked out.