High School Cross Country…Again

Today was my son’s home cross country meet. My son is a freshman and runs on the JV team and just has a blast (not running, but hanging with the guys and gals). So, after they had run the boys and girls races – they had a 5k race that anyone could participate in – coaches, fans, parents, ex-students, etc. I had seen this being done at a meet earlier this year, but I was one week out from the IronMan at the time and I could not take the chance of injury or going too hard, so I had to pass on that one.

This time my son did not know if they were going to have an “Open” race after the meet or not, so I didn’t bring my running gear with me. As the last runner in the boy’s Varsity race came to the finish line, we started to walk over to gather up my son and head off for some mountain bike riding. On the way, we notice that indeed they were having a 5k Open race and it was about to start. So, off goes the sweat pants and off to the starting line. The participants at the starting line included recent high school grads, some of the High School Cross Country coaches (btw: my son’s coach was 7th in the Madison Marathon a couple years ago – ya, I think he can run!), parents, and just members of the community.

I decide that if I’m going to run the 5k, I’m going to go out hard and see what these old legs can do. I probably haven’t run a 5k since high school – which was like centuries ago. I had actually run in the exact meet 26 years ago.

So, I started off at a pretty good clip (no garmin watch to pace myself) and tried to stay with the “back of the front group”. I knew I had the endurance to keep up a pretty fast pace (at least for me), but I didn’t know if that was the pace I was going or if it was much slower. At first, I just kept focusing on catching and passing the person in front of me. This went well until probably one mile into the race then the rest of the way was just trying to hold my position. I held my position until the last 400 yards when a lady passed me – I attempted to keep right behind her – but no luck.

At this point in the race, I’m ready for that darn finish line to show up RIGHT NOW. So, with the cross country teams lining part of the course cheering on all of us “Old folks” – I finally made it to the finish in 22 minutes and 10 seconds and in 14th place (they gave each of us a ribbon with our finish position as we came across the finish line). That turns out to be a 7:08 pace – which for me is extremely fast.

So what did I learn today – stick to the endurance racing – much easier.

Go slow and long – build the base -- Gotta love that!!

Later I’ll report on our mountain bike ride – one of the funnest things I’ve done in a long time.

– xt4, I found a great place to ride (right outside of Stoughton).