Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Race Report: Head for the Cure 5K


We did this race to support brain cancer research and to support our friend, Mark Helm, who was diagnosed with brain cancer years ago and is in full remission.  Mark is the younger brother of my friend Heather.  I've known Heather since kindergarten (we went through 17 years of schooling together.  3rd grade was REALLY hard) and I also did Tinman and last weekend's Jackson County Triathlon with her husband, Shane.

We haven't had an opportunity to participate in this race before so this was a first.  Subsequently, it was also the first time I really raced a 5k.  It wasn't on my race schedule originally but we finally got registered a few weeks ago.  My intention wasn't to really race it as I was doing the North Face Endurance Challenge Marathon Relay the day before and I had a 50 mile training ride schedule the same day.

I decided to race but decided to do a test, which was to run by perceived effort instead of the objective readout of my Garmin.

So instead of doing a full on race report, I'm just going to do a "5K" version, as in make it short.

We got to the site around 7:00am and eventually met up with the Helm/Mecham clan.  About 10 minutes prior to the 8:00am start, Shane and I did a half mile jog along the course to warm up the running sticks and then lined up.  I guess I was still hemming and hawing about fully racing because we lined up about 30 feet behind the start.

So once we crossed the timing mat I did some shuffle jogging until I saw an opening.  BAM!  I kicked it up in high gear.  For the next 3.09 miles I just tried to not scare people with my hard breathing as I passed.  Now they called out 4,500 participants (another record... Go Brain Cancer Nay Sayers!!), so this isn't Komen-like but it's large.  Given that, I was quite surprised to see timing clocks at mile 1 & 2.  That was awesome!  So mile one was in 6:38 clock time.  I had no clue when I crossed the timing mat, so that was my marker.   Two miles said 13:28.  I knew I was going to be slowing down due to my poor planning, so the 6:50 split was not a surprised.  As it turned out my first split was 6:21.  Pretty fly for this white guy!  That makes the last 1.1 in 6:51.  Due to my starting position, I didn't get passed until the last quarter mile!  Doh!  Lets recap:

Mile 1: 6:21
Mile 2: 6:50
Mile 3.1: 6:51
Total: 20:02

Ugh.. I just missed sub-20 by 2 seconds!! Going out too fast?  Not lined up correctly?  Yeah... probably both because if I was lined up correctly I wouldn't have done those unnecessary sprints to get open.  The course itself was pretty flat.  An uphill at the start and during mile 2 but it's really nothing.

Now some funky math later and you get 6:27 pace!  Whoa!  That was good enough for 8th out of 104 or 34th overall.

Post-race food grub was good.  G3 Recovery Gatorade, Water, G2 Gatorade, Pop, Granola Bar, Fruit, Sheridan's, Krispy Kremes (yeah, I replenished those 600 calories in no time... but that was by design with the 50 mile ride looming).  I will say I was quite surprised and pleased with the G3 Recovery  (Yes... I've gotten over the nasty taste). I'm sure they didn't have 4,500 of them but at least the first few hundred got one.

Good, Bad, Ugly, The Standard
I'm not going to get into it.  This is for a good cause.  If you are trying to decide to do this race based off of my race report... well, don't be dumb and just register.

BONUS!
Enough of all that. The really AWESOME part of this race was TKB also ran and she KICKED BUTT!  She doesn't fancy those boring longer distance runs and enjoys to dabble in the 5k market a few times a year.  She was able to do this race without walking!  Thanks to her time with the personal trainer, she no longer needs to run with the knee brace.  I'm so proud of her!

Dang #1681 is speedy cute!
I'll see if I can convince her to do a guest race report for you!

The Proof

Holy crap!  A race photo of me that actually looks decent!


Holy Crap!  Or rather, it looks like I'm going to take one.  This one isn't quite so flattering.
Shane flying in for a 5K PR! 
Photo of Heather (behind the grey shirt... thanks for ruining my shot, grey), Valerie, TKB, and Karen.  And some happy guy.

The girls again.  TKB, Heather, Valerie, and Karen.


Mark with Alex in arm and Heather & Shane's 2 year old cruising to the finish in the 50 meter dash! 

Little Lucas running from the scary Sporting KC mascot.

Two Words: Own It.


Post-Race Shot.  The Racin' Bowlings.  I love this photo!

Sorry.. per usually this is much longer than normal.  Race Report of Saturday's North Face Endurance Challenge coming in the next few days!

3 comments:

  1. LOVE IT!!! Thanks so much for supporting us. We were really touched and happy that you were there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Suggestion: You need to plug "fly for this white guy" as much as possible. Nice race!

    ReplyDelete