DAMN IMPRESSIVE

I remember writing this after a Memorial Day 5K after placing 123rd;

Seriously, I could possibly place 123rd out of 7,000 runners at Grandma's - last year 123rd ran 3:01. Yet in the 5K I'm 123rd out of 506 runners.

It looks like Saturday’s results have been tweaked a little and I finished 151st out of 5,958. That’s my highest finish at Grandma’s ever – having finished 168th on two other occasions. Those other two years had 700 and 900 more finishers, so my percentage was a little worse this year, but not by much.

I have to give a shout out to one of my roommates from the weekend – no not you, Tappe. Sorry. I was fortunate to share a dorm room with Jared (and David). Jared is 67-years-old and he won the 65-69 age group by 30 minutes - the largest age-group victory on the day for men - when he ran 3:07:22. That broke the previous course record for that age-group by 7 minutes. Just to give you a sense of his performance, let’s look at how he would have placed in every single age-group. 20-29 and 30-34 are the only two age groups where he would not have placed in the top-15. He would have placed 5th in 50-54 and won every age-group higher than that, as well as the 13-19 age-group. Pretty damn impressive, if you ask me.

After my TCM report I got “scolded” for saying I wanted to beat certain people more than others because of things like their outfit or their running style. The scolding didn’t help as the same thoughts crossed my mind on Saturday. For instance, there was a guy wearing full-length black compression tights on a day when it was 75+ and sunny. How could I not want to beat him? I was pretty sure he was mine when I saw him walk 3 times between miles 3 and 5.

Then there were two guys with shirts that read “Why are you chasing me?” on the back. Maybe it’s not what they intended, but I thought of it as an “I’m in front of you” type shirt. As they went by me around mile 3, one of them mentioned being 15 seconds behind pace. The other one told him not to worry because they’d be able to make up the time. I know I caught one of them – not sure what happened to the other.

It’d be nice if there was a way to keep track of certain people on the course and then see how they ended up running for the day. For example, a guy came by me just after the halfway mark. He said it was his first marathon. He also mentioned that a couple of weeks ago he had just run a 1:37 – keep in mind we just passed the half in 1:35. I’m curious what happened to him.

Finally, I’ve tried using heart rate monitors in the past, but I don’t like them. Given how people extol the virtues of a HRM, shouldn’t they help you on a day like Saturday? From what I can tell, they either don’t help or people aren’t listening to them. And if you’re not going to listen to it, why wear it? Just curious.

Quote of the Day;

“I've always felt that I put everything on the line in every race I have ever run. And if you do that, no matter what the clock says, there are no bad races.” – Jared Mondry