This marks the 4th year in a row that I’ve done this race. I figured this out the other day when I was folding my t-shirts that I’ve done this race every year it’s been sponsored by IBM. I dunno if they keep track of this sort of thing or not, but I thought it was a neat thing.
Last night, Timmy calls me all out of breath to tell me that he did it. He said that he found the perfect trail that does not involve crossing any streets.
Sweet! He says, let’s go have a beer to celebrate.
I figure a beer isn’t going to hurt, so I agree to meet him out. We all went to Bone Daddys and had some brew hah hahs.
They sell 32 oz. beers there, so I limited myself to 2. The new uniforms for the waitresses are really nice. We had a very good looking Asian lady for our waitress, who looked very good in the new uniforms. After leaving, I go home and hit the sack, at about 12:30. Much later than I wanted to, but not as late as it could’ve been.
When I woke up, I was already behind schedule.
I hurry up and get dressed and am about to head out when I notice that my roommate has blocked me in. There’s no rousing her, so I look around, find her keys, move her car out of the way, put her keys back in the house, get in my car, leave, drive to the new race site, park, and get to the starting line as fast as I can.
I was 8 minutes late.
I figure I could mill around with the folks doing the 5k, and just run the 10 k route whenever they leave, but the announcer, a guy by the name of “Evil” notices my 10k race bib and tells me that the 10k group left without me, over the loudspeaker.
I feel like every person that is there, is looking at me, which prompts me to waive at Evil (grrr) and take off running through the chute and on to the course.
The run felt pretty good. I actually didn’t start to get into a groove until after mile 2, and I felt pretty good at the end of the race.
I managed to catch up to the back of the pack at around mile 1.5 or so.
Like I mentioned earlier, the race was at a new site this year due to construction going on at the IBM campus in town. This new course was totally flat and by that I mean that the difference between the low point and the high point was only 6 meters, which is about as flat as you can make any course in this town.
All in all, it was a good race. Oh yeah, I also got a free chair massage at the end. They had this huge vendor fair setup with lots of free pizza from Mangia Pizza and a lot of gimmes from different health and fitness type places.
Mental note: I need to get me a full body massage later on this week, I felt so much better after this little 5 minute freebie that it‘s motivated me to pay to get a full body one.
I think this race was a good opener to the fall running/ marathon training season.
Stats:
Course: IBM 10k course (around the Northwood neighborhood in Northwest Austin).
Time: 1:22.17
Weather: 75 degrees, lite breeze
Terrain: flat, asphalt
Of note: Ran into Ralph on the course and a couple of other people who’s names I can’t recall.
