MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS

Here are some more random thoughts, observations and analysis (in no particular order) from Saturday’s race.

Biffeys are cold when it’s 5 degrees outside.

This race is run fairly smoothly. I like the “packet” pickup. They hand you your race number and 4 pins. That’s it. Race coffee mugs, instead of t-shirts (which I also like once in awhile) are handed out at the end.

I’m not sure what happened at the start. We were standing on the line when a sickly sounding air horn went off without warning and people started running.

Not sure if that weird start messed up the timing or not, but my watch was 10 seconds off of the “official” time. Since my watch was faster, I’m going with my time.

The only split I took was at the halfway mark. There was a guy reading splits at 10 miles, which I went through in 1:04:20. That means I was running 6:20 pace from 6.5 to 10. It also means my last 5k would have been at 6:35 pace. I know there was a decent headwind during part of that, but I shouldn’t have slowed down that much. I’m lucky only 1 guy passed me.

Like I mentioned in my report from yesterday, I thought I’d be happy once I was able to see the results and compare myself to other runners. Overall, I finished 28th out of 1,240 runners and 4th out of 120 in the 35-39 age group.

Here’s what I found when comparing runners who ran in 2005 and 2006. Of the first 100 finishers this year, 33 of them ran last year. On average, for every person that ran 30 seconds faster this year, I found two people that ran 2:00 slower. To keep the statistical integrity of this very meaningful analysis intact, I threw out anyone whose time changed by more than 5 minutes over last year; including a guy that went from 1:30 to 1:19 – wow - and a guy that went from 1:18 to 1:29 – ouch.

Since only a third of the first hundred finishers repeated from last year, I found it eerie how closely times and places corresponded from year to year.

Place 2005 2006
25th 1:23:53 1:23:54
50th 1:26:50 1:28:05
75th 1:29:58 1:30:24
100th 1:32:39 1:32:24

What does all this mean? Nothing, really. Just thought it was interesting.
I should mention how my training partners did. Jenna won by nearly 7.5 minutes, with a time of 1:21:20 or 24 seconds faster than last year. Joyce was the 4th woman overall and 1st in the 35-39 age-group with a 1:29:56. Based on how great she looked during last weekend’s 16 miler, I thought she would have been a few minutes faster. I guess that’s why we run the race.