What a blast: a funny race in a beautiful state park and for only $10.  Loved it.

So the deal is, you predict your time and the people closest to getting their prediction win awards.  No watches, Garmins or HR monitors allowed.

I’ve been changing my predicted time for the last couple days because I couldn’t figure out what to go for.  I knew I’d be slower without a watch, but by how much?  A few people ran it last week (it was cancelled due to it being 7 degrees, but some people showed up so they ran it) and the posted times were quite slow.  I didn’t know how much of that was the course and how much due to the cold that day, so by time I got to the race, I settled on a final prediction of 23:00.

As it turned out, all that goal musing was for naught because you weren’t allowed to change the prediction you put on your online registration form.  Oh well.  I had put 22:14, my last PR, so I knew that was going to be way off.

Before the race started, I got to meet up with my forum-buddy-race-friend Matt.  It’d been months since I’d seen him and he’s a real sweetie, so we had a quick chat before my warmup – a totally half-assed warmup because I only had 5 minutes before the gun.

Time to line up, we’re told to hold up our wrists to prove we were all watchless.  Snow starts falling, the gun goes off and we’re chasing a guy in a pickle suit who peels off quickly to take photos of everybody (I think he was one of the race directors).

Everybody starts together down the same path (paved bike trail) and then the people doing the longer trail run turn off, while the rest of us continue on the path.  Matt and I were both doing the 3.08 miler, so we ran together for about the first third, then I went on ahead.  There were some rolling hills and wind in spots, but nothing too bad.   One guy passed me near the beginning, as did a couple, but the couple went on to the trail portion, so I managed to keep my place from that point on.

I felt good, not dying, just a steady hard effort.  Turned the final corner, saw the clock and was shocked.  I’m not sure of my final time because I can’t remember if I saw 21:40 when I first spotted the clock or when I passed it, but I think that’s my final time.  I’m pretty sure whatever it was is the equivalent of a sub-22 5K, Final time: 21:46 (which comes out to a 21:54 5K).  Needless to say, I am one happy woman.

I was the 2nd woman overall on the 3.08 race portion, but didn’t win anything since it’s all about hitting your prediction.  Matt won a pickle wearing a sombrero and sitting in a beer glass (the pickle, not him), I think he was just 5 or 6 seconds from his prediction.  Monday is Take Your Pickle To Work Day, so he and the other winners were ordered to take photos of their pickles at work for the Pickle website.   Good times, good times.

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