Winning

MARC Train 5 Miler
Saturday, June 25, 2011

I did it! I won a race! Something I would've never dreamed possible. After all, I've never considered myself fast. But I guess you could say my recent accumulation of race prizes has proven otherwise. Either that or I'm just not in a very competitive age group.

I had originally planned to give the Dreaded Druid Hills 10K another shot after having to walk a good portion of the course last year due to still recovering from food poisoning, but after looking at previous years' winning times of 40+ minutes for the MARC Train 5 Miler, I knew I had to give this race a shot because I would at least come away with an AG prize.

Looking around at the start, I didn't see many fast women out there, but as always, I still doubted myself and started thinking that some of these women might be faster than they look. I lined up at the front of the pack and found myself in first place right off the starting line with only a handful of guys in front of me. This made me slightly uncomfortable as I've always found myself in the position of the chaser, picking out women to catch up to and pass throughout a race, and didn't want to be the chasee. I fully expected several women to catch up to me at any moment and didn't enjoy the paranoia. Throughout the first two miles, I kept hearing footsteps behind me and thought one of them was the 2nd place woman getting ready to pass me. When the person did pass me, I turned my head and directly stared him in the face. Surprised by my reaction to him passing, he asked me if I was alright and I told him, "Yeah, I was just checking to see if you were female."

This course was an out-and-back, so it was nice to be able to gauge how far back the next woman was once I made it to the turnaround point and was heading back. When I calculated that she was about a minute behind me and would probably not catch up, I lost a little motivation to keep up the pace and eased up a bit. It also didn't help that the trail trended slightly uphill on the way back because it was so subtle on the way out that I didn't even realize I was going downhill.

It was extremely encouraging to hear people still running in the other direction cheer for me and tell me that I was in 1st place. Although I knew the second place woman was pretty far behind me at the turnaround, I was still paranoid that she had caught up to me on the way back, especially since I eased up on my pace. When I crossed Rt. 170 at the traffic light, I was able to get a glimpse of whether anyone was behind me and was overcome with excitement that I was about to actually WIN a race!

I would post pictures of my winning plaque, but it is still in the process of being made at the moment. They only had one overall winner plaque made and gave it to the overall male winner and were planning to just give me an AG plaque, but when I talked to the race directors after the awards were given out, they agreed that the overall female winner was just as deserving of a nice overall plaque as the male winner and planned to have one made for me.

Greene Turtle West 5K
Sunday, June 26, 2011

Chris and I decided to make Sunday a beach day, but found a quick 5K in Ocean City that we wanted to do before hitting the beach and bumming it up for the rest of the day. Since we had a blast with my cousins on our last day trip to the beach, I asked them if they cared to join us again and didn't mind getting up early and waiting/sleeping in the car while we ran. Much to my surprise, not only did Melissa agree to go, she wanted to attempt to run her very first race and signed up with us.

After a night of bad decisions and limited sleep, we were on the road at 5 AM. We got there with 45 min to sign up, get ready, and warm up a little. The weather wasn't too hot and there was a nice breeze going through. I saw a girl with ponytail braids that looked very familiar and was trying to place where I'd seen her before. I thought that she might be the girl that beat me at Damien's with her finish line sprint, but couldn't get confirmation from neither Chris nor Hai and didn't get a chance to talk to her before the race started. She was lined up near the front and since I wanted to be the chaser and not the chasee today and Melissa was feeling a little nervous, we moved further back in the field.

We took off on the shoulder of Stephen Decatur Highway for about 1/2 mile before turning into some neighborhood streets. Chris and Hai were out of my sight in no time as well as what I thought was a handful of girls. Unlike yesterday's course, this course was completely flat, not subtly up or down at all and I found myself running closer to 7:00 min/miles than 7:30 and even saw my watch dip into 6:50 pace for a little bit. I knew I was on pace for a PR and would be able to break 23 minutes if I kept it up. After the turnaround, I set my sights on the familiar ponytail braids girl and spent the next half mile trying to catch up to her. I finally caught up and passed her around mile 2 and spent the next mile paranoid that she was on my toes. Right after turning off Stephen Decatur Highway and into the Greene Turtle parking lot where the finish line was, I spotted Chris with his camera and was preparing to give him my best ham face before realizing that ponytail braids girl was right over my shoulder and sprinting. I kicked it up a notch and sprinted to hold her off and beat her by 2 seconds. We both keeled over after crossing the finish line and were gasping for air. I complimented her on her excellent sprint at the end and she turned to me and said "You too!"

Turns out that the all-out sprint between ponytail braids girl and me at the end was a race for 3rd place female overall, so I was happy to have barely won! I later talked to her inside the Greene Turtle and found out that she was at Damien's 5K a few weeks back and after looking at some photos from that race, I was able to confirm that she was indeed the girl that beat me at the finish line. Oh, redemption feels so good!

After catching my breath and a cup of ice water, I headed back out on the course to run Melissa in. It was so much fun to be there for her for her first race. I made sure to cheer for her extra loud when I saw her after the turnaround point. I prepared her to ham for Chris with his camera at the turn into the parking lot and told her to sprint when she saw the finish line and pass as many people as she could, which she did!

We were treated to unlimited wings and beer inside the restaurant after the race (in addition to bananas and yogurt, but who cares about that?). I can say wings is pretty high up on the list of the most random things I've had post-race. Hai came in 4th male overall (1st 25-29 AG), Chris got 2nd for the 30-34 AG, and I got 3rd female overall (1st 19-24 AG). We each got a Greene Turtle pint glass as an award. They were giving out random goodie bags that contained shirts, water bottles, and other goodies. I didn't want Melissa to be left out of prizes, so I pointed to her and told the race director that she should get something for finishing her first ever race and he handed her a goodie bag. Then, slightly peeved that they only went one deep in overall prizes, which included not only the pint glass the AG winners got, but a nice tote bag, lunch bag, and gift certificate to the Greene Turtle, I was able to con the race director into giving me a goodie bag too! Yay! We all left the Greene Turtle happy and vowed to make this an annual tradition before hitting the beach and cooling off in the ocean!