Right before the race started - and because this was a small town, most of the racers seemed to know each other - a guy about our age (mid 40s) named Frankie, in a white tshirt, white and green plaid Bermudas and work boots was joking with the kids and other runners that "I'm going to lead this race at first" and by God, when the start horn went off, he held off the rest of the field for about 200 yards!

We tried to not go out too fast... Kent hates it when people jackrabbit out of the starts, and this was such a small field there was no reason to, but when the girl set off the air horn, BAM! They were off at a 6:30 pace according to the Garmin. We throttled it back, and passed a few of the teenagers about .70 miles into the race.

Oh, we passed Frankie right at the half-mile mark. He was already walking... I pointed at the Garmin and said "Hey Frankie, you'd do better with technology!" and he laughed.

Everyone was quite friendly, and during one of the turnarounds early in the course, we came back and one of the aforementioned "age-appropo hotties" checked me out REALLY SERIOUSLY according to Kent. ;)

I really kept the run tempo under control in this run. Yes, I wanted to run better than last week, but I did not want to bonk or burn up in the process. I'm still struggling compared to how I was racing last year at this time - the run conditioning simply isn't there - but I can feel the run conditioning coming back. I need to be patient, be consistent, and my run times will start to drop back down. There is no secret but hard work!

I did drop about 5 people in the course of the race, but wasn't able to hold off a girl in the last mile that I'd passed halfway through. By the time there was a 1/2 mile left, I'd lost sight of Kent in the turns on the course. But running with the Garmin is so helpful, it really is a great tool in keeping my pace up and running a smarter race when you don't know the course.

Absolutely nothing, beyond not slacking off of my run training this year. I suppose I could've worked harder to not let Kent kick my ass LOL I ran a few seconds faster than last week, and the temp was a little higher but the humidity was a lot worse, so I'm happy with the run.

Stood around and watched the even slower than me runners finish. Frankie came right in at 34:59, ripping his shirt off and he got lots of applause.


Lack of run mileage and motivation since last December.


I'm still annoyed that my 5K times are running about 1 1/2 minutes behind what they should be, but... its all my fault for not running enough. The good news is is that I'm getting better, and this was a nice training race to get me in a frame to run a good race at Cowtown later this year and to start training for Napa.

FINAL NOTE: I wrote my RR like I usually do... not out of disrespect for Christine, but because I think she would want us to write our RRs like we usually do, because she liked reading RRs and commenting on them herself. I kept thinking how nice and green things were, the clowning around by Frankie... the very intimate nature of a small race, much like BT, this was... and how she would have liked that.