Director's Dare
Running on Empty
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
I had the opportunity to run in my first competitive 5K race this weekend. The closest I've come to actually running a race of any distance was when we used to have run laps around the football field during Hell Week of the football season. This was way different.
The 5 th annual SUU ROTC 5K took place last Saturday. Last semester I worked as an academic advisor for the College of Humanities and Social Science here at SUU. During that time I got to know a bunch of great students. Occasionally, some of these students stop by me new office to visit. A few weeks ago, a particular student stopped by and I told him I'd seen him running the other morning with the other ROTC cadets and he ought to sign up for the Summer Games 5K or 10K. He told me he would if I signed up for their annual race. Well, we made the deal.
True to form for me, I mixed up the dates of the race. All last week I was planning on running this race on April 24. Due to several factors I wasn't really able to run all week, but I wasn't worried because the race was so far away, right? Well, on Friday night I realized my mistake, but it was really too late to make much difference.
Early Saturday morning I found myself not hitting the snooze button on my alarm. Okay, I did hit it, but only once, which is way fewer times than I wanted to on a Saturday. I got up, quickly dressed and ate some Grape Nuts for breakfast. Being full of a big percentage of my recommended daily allowance for fiber and folic acid I made my way to the Eccles Coliseum where I paid my registration fee and then sat around and felt nervous.
This being my very first race, I was only slightly confuse by the race number I was handed. I quickly caught on when I was also handed a safety pin. I only wished I had grabbed a couple of them since the wind was (and almost always is) blowing and flapping of the number pinned to my chest got a little annoying.
I had planned to go over the route before hand, but obviously I had missed my window. I looked at a map and tried to figure it out, but then decided it would only matter for the person in the front and I was pretty certain that that person would not be me.
The race started at 9:00 a.m. sharp with the huge boom of the ROTC cannon, and I was off. Everyone says don't start out too quickly, and I tried not to, but by the middle of the race I had discovered that I had definitely started off too quickly. I have to admit that I was forced to walk twice, but overall, I felt okay about my race. I didn't break any land-speed records by any means, but I finished ahead of some and behind others. Now I am a little embarrassed to admit that I was passed by a 70 year old man and two 15 year old girls, but at the time I was only thinking, “Breath, gasp, gasp, pant, breath, pant, gasp.”
I crossed the finish line at 24:54, not a world record time, but I did finish 2nd in my age group. Overall I feel I can say that the race was very well organized, well staffed and I had a good experience. I also have a benchmark from which to start measuring my progress.
Well, keep the emails coming. Until the next time.
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