Our Town's Memorial Day Race
Yes, my butt is in this photo that was in published on the newspaper's website.
Oh yay. It's possible that T is one of the yellow/gold shirts near the top of the hill.
Oh yay. It's possible that T is one of the yellow/gold shirts near the top of the hill.
Bringing up the rear of the parade is the top high school marching band in the country, the perfect grand finale. There is never a year that they are anything less than awesome. And the years the alumni band marches -- even better. They still have chops -- 10, 20, 30, and maybe even more -- years since the last time they performed as a high school students. This town bleeds marching band and lacrosse.
Our parade also starts uniquely -- the first group up the parade course is a pack of 400 - 500 runners running the annual Veterans Memorial Day 5 km race. "15,000 parade spectators will greet you along the parade course" the flyer advertises every year. I've been one of those spectators watching the wave of runners come up the street and cheering them on for that first quarter mile of the race year after year and thought, "I'd like to do be part of that someday."
This year I decided it was that someday.
It has to be one of the cheapest races left in the country -- ten bucks per entrant and you get a t-shirt. So I signed the three of us up and this morning we were off to the races.
My biggest fear was how slowly I would be going up the parade route. I referred to it as the run of shame. I didn't really want 15,000 people watching me slogging up the hill. "People will be yelling, 'Move it lady so the parade can start,'" I half-joked throughout this weekend. "The Army guy wearing the 50-pound pack of gear is going to be ahead of me." The entire parade route section is a long uphill. Gradual, but uphill. Never optimal, and I've struggled with hills this year.
But I figured once I got around the corner and off the parade route, I would be free to run without anyone pointing at the fat old lady shuffling up the road and I could just focus on it being a training run with 400-plus other people.
Actually, it went better than that. My training runs have been grueling and slow. I typically have three goals for a race. In the old days it would have been C) break 25 minutes, B) break 23 minutes, and A) run a PR. Today my goals were C) finish, B) not be the last finisher, and A) break 45 minutes. That's how slow my training runs have been.
Apparently I had an A+ goal that I wasn't aware of. I broke 40 minutes. Thirty-eight and change, but still, nine minutes faster than my last training run. Bonus.
I had help though; Hubs tweaked his back a few days ago and was in no condition to race. The plan had been for him to pace T, but we had to tell T to just run his own race. He's an experienced 5 km runner at this point and knows what a "I can finish this" pace is.
So Hubs hung back with me and carried my "in case I need water before the one-mile mark" bottle. We dropped on the hood of the car as we passed by where we'd parked it about three-quarters of a mile in, but it made me less anxious to run knowing that I could hydrate early on if I needed to. Given that I was carrying an epipen in one hand due to an epipen holder malfunction at the start of the race, it was nice to not have to carry a water bottle in my other hand.
Then about three kilometers into the race, he offered to carry the epipen. By that point, my hand was sweaty, my arm was tired from having to grip something, and I just cannot run with something in my left hand. Hubs noticed me swapping it back and forth between hands, and offered to hold it. At that point he could no longer DNF, as my epipen has to run with me. I was grateful to be able to run unencumbered.
And he came in handy at the end of the race, as I was kicking in to not get caught yet again by a group of girls who were doing the walk-until-a-runner-comes-up-to-you-and-then-start-running-as-fast-as-you-can-until-you're-too-tired-to-run-anymore-50-meters-later annoying as hell thing. Twice one of them stopped to walk right in front of me, giving me three choices: mow her over, put on the brakes, or push her out of the way -- since the final one-and-a-half kilometers are on the narrow towpath along the old Erie Canal. With the four of them were running as a blockade and therefore there was no running around her without running into another of them. Hint as to which choice I opted for, I did not put on the brakes and no one runners went down or were injured.
As I raced for the finish line Hubs yelled out, "Don't let them pass you, hon!" -- code for "they're catching up to you."
Which put me into another gear. And then with about 10 steps left, he yelled, "Kick it!" which was a warning that one of them was aiming to pass me. Hells no! Not at the damn finish line. I dug in and found the sprinter in me.
So Hubs has a finish time that he will never admit to, but it gave me the opportunity to have a better run that I would have expected.
As for T, he finished second in his age group with a respectable 23:36 for a nine-year-old. His first mile was in 6:55, so he went out a little fast to capture a PR -- sub-23:06 -- this time around. But three soccer boys from three different elementary schools who all know each other finished one-two-three in the nine and under group, which is way cool. They're all speed and endurance demons on the soccer pitch as well.
The best thing that could possibly have happened was us being stopped repeatedly by male runners in the 40 - 55 or so age range in order for them to congratulate him, saying "You passed me during the race; way to go!" He, who has griped and complained and moaned and groaned about doing any running at all over the past year and a half said he had a good race and he wants to go faster next year. A++ goal.
The marching band that you don't get to see when you run the race. Unless you're one of the first runners in and have enough gas in you to run the mile back into town,
which some people do. I am not one of them.
which some people do. I am not one of them.
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