Let's see. What else? No mile markers. No mile timers. Start race from finish side of finish line and run through gate and over mats ... not the finish mats but start mats another 25 feet up the asphalt. If anybody figured out when to start their watch, I'd be surprised.
Oh ... and the ChampionChips were on velcro straps to put around your ankle. I saw some blood that had me figuring some people had it too tight.
A 5K started 15 minutes after the "10K" and, on the second loop around, the latter runners ran into the former walkers who, of course, filled up the entire lane of the road. I barked, "On your left," until I was hoarse. Naturally, walkers have no concept of what it means so I and my colleagues faced the danger of car-back traffic in the other lane.
The food and drinks were plentiful and the swag was extraordinary, given Sea World/AB probably put some muscle on their park sponsors. Frank Shorter was there signing autographs and posing. The crowd was good. Maybe 1,000 or so in all including the 5K runners and kid runners.
The race? Oh yeah. Well they said the course was now 5.2 miles or an 8K. Okay; which is it? The top five finishers had ungodly pace times. The presumed winner went around at a 3:36 pace. No, it was not Ryan Hall. Maybe that's why the score sheet requested the top five to go see the timers.
I ran well. It took me 43:08. My friend C who gave me A's race bib (who saved $1,000 by taking a Saturday flight to California for Thanksgiving) said her Garmin read 5.3 miles. If it was 5.2 then my time was not so great so I measured the course on Google maps. I calculated 5.3 too so I have changed my records to reflect an 8:06 pace run over the longer distance.
Seeing as how it really wasn't me running, who cares? A, who's name was on my bib, amazing to her friends, finished fourth in her 25-29 age group. I was 7th of 11 in mine, assuming nobody else was running under an assumed name/age/gender.
5 comments:
The whole thing was just a comedy of errors. Good thing you didn't come in any better in your/A's AG. That would have been interesting.
Hey, you do one of these and are grateful you didn't have to pay, have some bling and at least ran some solid 8:00 (ish) miles!!!
oh fun!
as i ran this morning, I thought of some recent diatribes against bikers not being considerate of runners. and then i thought of run/walkers not being considerate of ... anyone...hogging the whole path, oblivious to what's going on around them. and then i thought of the drivers of CARS...
and then i thought of a far-away place, where everyone gets along!
Nice time, however you figure it!
It sounds like you had a good time, but what an organizational mess. Looks what happens when John Hughes isn't there to lead the way! Sheesh!
At least you ran for free! And at a great pace! You're faster than you were last February.
Are you running OUC this year?
Yeah, I was working down at Track Shack yesterday and heard how many things went wrong at this race. At least they had some good food and schwag.
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