A Rabbit Runs Through It 5K

Race: 5K running race
Date: April 14, 2012
Location: Latrobe, PA
Time: 25:16
Overall Rank: 62 out of 235
Age Group Rank: 9 out of 18
Results: http://www.runhigh.com/2012RESULTS/R041412CB.HTML

First 5K race of the year (and only my 4th 5K race ever). My fastest running pace ever. So it was a great race! The route was through downtown Latrobe, PA; it was mostly flat. They actually started the race 3-4 min early, which was considerably dumb, as there were some folks who hadn't gotten to the starting line yet. Glad I was early instead of my normal 2-min tardiness to everything. This was a family-friendly event and a surprising number of participants ran about 0.5 mile and then exhausted themselves. That would have been me a couple years ago. But not today. At that point, I was relaxed and enjoying the fact that I was passing lots of people. At each straightaway though, I'd see 50 or more people ahead of me, and that kept me going until I realized I'd never catch them. So I just found a pace I liked and kept going. At the midpoint I was a little concerned that I would run out of energy before the end. People around me were breathing hard and grunting and spitting, and even though I wasn't doing the latter two things, it kind of made me want to. Coming into the home stretch (which seemed to stretch a little more than I thought as we circled the stadium where we had started), I was ready to be done. But then I heard someone coming up from behind me and I thought "oh no you don't" and started to sprint, too. The man exclaimed "we've got to beat the ladies!" referring to two women just ahead of us. Somehow he passed me but I stayed on his tail, passing both women. I said "sorry" as I passed them, thinking it was a little obnoxious to zoom past them just ahead of the finish line. "We did it!" I said as the man and I crossed the finish line, and he and I did a high-five. We walked the rest of the track to cool down, during which he talked about going fishing later in the day. The man ended up winning second place in the 50-59 age group. That's actually how I know my own finish time, because I wasn't paying any attention to the finish clock when I passed it. I just wanted to "beat the ladies!" I'm sure they didn't care. It's all for fun.