Running The Race

The Franklin Classic is one of those “must do” races for me. There are not a lot of 10k in the area and so it is always a good chance to do a sanity check on my fall marathon training. Also, it is for a good cause, the Mercy Children’s Clinic, and what else is there do to on Labor Day other than to get up and run.

Franklin is about 6 miles south and I pulled into the parking garage about 6:15. There was already a crowd gathering for the 5K race that started at 7. The 10K race started at 7:30.

I put on my race bib, Garmin and grabbed my camera and headed to pick up my timing chip.

As I left the parking garage I turned on my watch.

After getting my chip, I looked at my watch and notice it was not on, strange. I turned it on again and saw the low battery message just before it cut off….rats. I didn’t bring my sports watch, so I was running “blind”.

I took photos of the 5k start and then headed back to the car to drop off the camera and my Garmin.

Went a found Joe and hung out with him as we waited for the race to start.

It was very humid with no air moving. I told Joe that this reminded me of Chicago last year.

When the gun fired, we slowly made it to the starting line. Joe said he would see me at the finish. I told him I would save him some food.

Without a watch, I just took off and ran. The pace felt good but with the hills and the heat, I was fearful that I started out too fast.

When I got to the first split, I realized I didn’t look at the clock at the start so I didn’t know what my offset was. The split was a clock time of around 9.

At mile 3, I grabbed some water and then again at mile 4.5. I felt that I had slowed down some but kept pushing. By that point, it seemed that everyone was struggling with the humidity.

The race starts and finishes at the Square. The last two block are through the “downtown” district. It is a really cool finish because of the crowds, it has the feel of a big time race finish.

I pushed for the finish line as the clock turned 52:00. Now I just had to wait to see what my chip time was.

Headed for the food tent and got PowerAid and bananas. When they finally posted the results, my chip time was 51:06, a PR. Beating my time from last year by 29 seconds.

Even though I placed 16 out of 64 in my age group, I was the first 54 year old to finish. When you get old you look for small victories!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Race Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.