80F, SSE 9 mph, 87%, sunny at 8:00 a.m. Wade and I with his daughter Heather traveled to The Woodlands this morning for a 5K. This was a lovely little race, perfectly executed by a local running store. They run it twice a month year round. It is kind of like finding a small out-of-the-way restaurant that nobody else knows about. We weren't sure what to expect, but the online directions to the starting area at Barbara Bush Elementary School were good and we ended up pulling in 45 minutes ahead of time to a nearly empty parking lot. Gradually people arrived to the point that when everybody was collected we had 100 runners.
As I mentioned yesterday, the entry fee for this thing is "one dolla please". I paid for all three of us and told them to keep the change. We wondered how they could do timing at that price, forget the shirts, and when we got there we could see that there would be no electronic chips or bib numbers. They did it by handing out popsicle sticks with numbers on them as you crossed the finish line. A recorder would write down the time for each stick as it was passed out and then "if you want your name on the internet" you gave them the name that goes with your popsicle stick (apparently you can give them any name you want), and presto, official race results.
I had a feeling this would be a faster than normal crowd for these parts and it was confirmed when I saw one particular ankle tattoo: RTRTR, hard core guy. Another noteworthy entrant appeared to be about 70 years old, taller than me and about 135 pounds max. His shorts were distressingly short. I told Wade and Heather that if I ever show up to a race dressed like that they had my permission to stage an intervention. I hoped like heck he was not faster than me.
Texas is hotter than Hades and this one lived up to our reputation. My splits were 6:33, 6:43, 6:55 and 6:59 for the stub, not what I would call negative splits. The distance was spot on, ten thumbs up to these guys. We ran around the parking lot twice then followed a path through the trees. Alarmingly I got stuck behind some runners to start, but once we got out of the parking lot it was easier to pass people, and the course stayed on a fairly wide paved trail the whole way. I passed the old guy in the Daisy Dukes at about 0.5 miles, so after that I was playing with house money. There was a group of runners ahead of me that were running together, they must have run 6 flat on the first mile, but despite me slowing down I still passed all but one of them in the second mile. A couple of them came back and passed me in the last half mile. Sure enough, one of them made a wrong turn right before the finish line and I followed him, kind of a tradition for me. But it got corrected within 4 or 5 seconds, so no major damage. Highest heart rate was 186, but I felt like I maxed it out. No nausea though, so maybe I have a reserve that I didn't find this morning.
I asked the race official what the winning time was and she said 17:45. She also said the same guy runs this course about a minute faster in cooler weather. So even though I missed my PR by 5 seconds, I'm blaming this race and every other slow run this summer on the weather. This fall I will find a different excuse. There were about 100 runners, so my 7th place finish was not quite as good as my 27th place finish a few weeks ago, but these are faster runners and all things considered I ran a better race. Fun times in The Woodlands, we are definitely going to do this one again.
PM: We celebrated my son's 18th birthday tonight, came home on a full stomach and ran 4 TM miles, hill work. That was fun. | 