Race Report: 2013 Jailbreak 5K

May 30, 2013 by Greg Fowler

About 7:15am, I pulled into my parking space at Jailbreak last Saturday.  I was alone, and the anticipated father vs. son battle was not going to happen.  I assume  son was scared of the old man running him down.  The reality is he’s a teenager, and I don’t understand what he thinks most of the time.  He had just decided not to run.

Anyway, since I was by myself, I had the radio on the station I wanted, and as I parked, Freebird came on the radio.  Hope that is a good sign, I thought to myself.  Since this was only a 5K, my playlist for this run did not include Freebird, so I just listened for a minute.

I stepped out of the car and walked down to some nearby soccer fields to warm up on the paths around the fields.  The weather was unusually cool for late May in the midlands of South Carolina – around 50 degrees with low humidity.  Perfect for a run, though.  If I didn’t run well today, I could not use my weather excuses.  Darn.

After warming up, I made sure I was at the starting line early enough to be toward the front, just after the big dogs.  The starter finally gave the go, and I pressed the start button on my watch as I took off.  Uh-oh.  My watch said MEMORY FULL.  This means the run will not record.  In the past I’ve had watch glitches that let me down, but this glitch was totally my fault. It will only hold 20 workouts, and I had not cleared them out lately.

Now I had a decision to make.  “Trust your feelings” came to mind for a split second.  Nope.  Can’t do that.  So, I hastily cleared the workouts from my watch as I ran and restarted the workout, but the damage was done.  My time was now at least 3o seconds off. I could tell my instant pace, though.

We passed the first mile marker, and the lady with a stop watch wasn’t yelling out split times.  No big deal, I thought.  Maybe the mile two person will be.    Just past the half way point, I approached the one water station.  The low humidity had really dried out my throat, so I grabbed a water.  At this point it is a short hill up to the mile two marker.  There was a guy with a stop watch, but he wasn’t calling out time, so I asked him.  13:35 he said.  I was a bit surprised. I was right on target at roughly a 6:47/mile pace.  Unfortunately, the hard part had arrived.

Mile three starts with a down hill, but once we turned left on Church Street, its a decent uphill stretch, and I felt so slow.  We turned left on Gibson, and the course flattened out for the final half mile or so.  I rounded the final curve, and with probably 100 yards to go, I  could finally see the clock.  21:10.   At this point,  I pushed as hard as I could and think I actually passed a couple of people.  As I crossed the finish line, I looked up and saw the clock read 21:30 – a new PR!

I had another problem to deal with now, though – trying not to puke.  I kept walking and breathing deep.  It was close, but I held it in.

Later, when the official results were posted, I saw that my time had been adjusted to 21:26.  This was because of chip time, not gun time.  I’ll take it!

Even with a PR, I finished 4th in my age group, just missing the podium by about 25 seconds.  For final results click here.

POFIFOTO!

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Race Report: 2013 Lexington Race Against Hunger

Feb 24, 2013 by Greg Fowler

As I’ve mentioned several time before, the Lexington Race Against Hunger is one of my favorite races.  It is well organized with a great cause, has a good tough route, and has a nice post race spread.  I just realized, though, the extra piece of the puzzle that makes the race so good: the Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church gym.

Huh? You say.

Since the race occurs the last weekend of February, the weather turns out to be a factor more often than not.  Most of the time, the race is cold.  The first year I ran it, it rained the entire time, but the temperature was fairly warm.  This year the forecast was not only cold but also heavy rain.  So, as I hung out in the dry gym as the rain poured, I was thankful to have it. Then, after the race, as we listened to the awards presentation in a nice warm building, I was again thankful for the gym.

I had three goals for this year’s LRAH: set my first PR in a 10K since 2009,  help place our company team in the top 3 of the corporate competition, and, finally, stay injury free with my next marathon just two weeks away.

So, what happened? Let’s find out.

Goal 1: Break 46:45 to Set a New 10K Personal Record (PR)

As I hung out in the gym before the race, occasionally looking outside at the pouring rain, I was thinking to myself ‘No PR today without a good warmup’.  I really didn’t want to go run around any longer in cold rain than I had to, but about 30 minutes before the race, the rain pretty much stopped, and I stepped out into a damp 40 degrees to warm up. I donned my homemade leaf bag rain slick and headed out.  I was able to get an OK 15-20 minute warm up, but certainly not what would have like.  At least I was dry so far.  I wandered up to the starting line,  found a couple of my team mates and waited for the starting gun.

The race started right on time, and we took off.  My basic strategy was this: try to run the easier, flatter miles (1, 2, and 6) around a 7 minute per mile pace.  Then for hilliest miles (3, 4, and 5), just give what I could and hope I could beat 46:45.  I had run a 5K two weeks prior that seemed to indicate I was in the ballpark with these goals.

Mile 1 was right on target, about 7:06, but a light rain had started back. Mile 2 is a very steep downhill, and I ran it in 6:54, for a two mile split right on plan.  Good news/bad news at the point. The rain stopped.  That was good news.  The bad news?  Now the brutal part of the course appeared as we climbed Main Street Lexington.  After the tough hills of South Church Street, my mile 3 split was 7:45.

Mile 3 had really taken its toll, and despite mile 4 being flatter, I could only manage another 7:45 split.  The first half of mile 5 is a decent down hill on Hendrix Street toward Church St.  I knew the second half of mile 5 included a short steep hill up Church St to Main Street, then another tough hill up North Lake Drive as we turned back toward Saxe Gotha and the finish.  So, I tried to make up some time on the Hendrix Street downhill.

Must have work, because I hit the 5 mile split at 7:28.  Not great, but decent.  There was still a bit of the North Lake Drive hill left between Lexington Elementary School and Lexington Middle.  My watch showed just past 37 minutes.  1.2 miles to go, and I couldn’t really do the math to tell if I was I ahead of my goal pace.

My GPS watch will tell me my per mile pace, but I decide not to check it  Just suck it up, I told myself.  Almost there.  As I topped the hill and took one last swig of water from the last aid station, I just tried to keep the legs churning.    The mile 6 split was 7:24, and my watch showed around 44:30.  I thought I was in the clear for a PR now, but I tried to push it a bit more to make sure.  I crossed the finish line in 45:55, running the last .2 miles at a 7:06 per mile pace and securing the PR by 50 seconds!

To see the complete results, click here.

Goal 2: Help Our Team to a Top 3 Finish in the Corporate Competition

One of the unique aspects of the LRAH, is the corporate competition, where teams compete in cross country style scoring, taking your top five runners as scorers.  Well, this year we could only muster up 5 runners for our team.  I’m proud to report we defended our 3rd place finish from last year.

Goal 3: Stay Injury Free

Hmmm.  Jury is still out on this one. As I mentioned earlier, my next marathon (Columbia, SC Marathon) is March 9th, two short weeks after the LRAH.  The training program that I loosely follow had me running 13 miles at a slower pace instead of a 10K at all out race pace on LRAH day.  Well, I did the 13.  I just did 6 more miles after the LRAH awards to get it in.  I felt pretty good, too.  On Sunday, (today, as I write this) I was pretty sore in the usual post race spots – calves and quads.  As the day has gone on, though, a pain that I had hoped to never have again has appeared in the top of my left foot.  Last time, I found out I had stress fractures.  This time, I hope it is just some tendon soreness, and I will take it easy on the running this week.

POFIFOTO!

Again, to see the complete results, click here.

PS.  Given the weather forecast of cold rain, I took extra care with my playlist, adding several appropriate songs to amuse myself.  Here’s a screen shot of my tunes for the race:

 

 

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Race Review: 2012 Jailbreak 5K

May 28, 2012 by Greg Fowler

Event Recap

Everyone knows that Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer.  Most everyone also knows that summer means hot in the midlands of South Carolina.  So, if you are planning a holiday weekend on the lake or at the beach, then bright, sunny and hot are what you want.  If you want to run a race, though, then these are not what you want.  Throw in some very high humidity, and you have the race conditions for last Saturday’s Jailbreak VI in Lexington, South Carolina.  The temperature at race time was 75 degrees, and the humidity was 75%, according to my weather app. Yuck.

The local elites didn’t seem to have too much trouble with the heat. What they did have trouble with was an outsider who rained on their parade. Scott Wietecha from Hendersonville, Tennessee showed up and threw a 14:47 on the field, besting perennial favorite Eric Ashton by an entire minute. Folks, that’s a butt-whippin in my limited 5K race knowledge book.  I could not have run a 14:47 if I’d have turned left at the intersection of Pond View and Gibson and cut 3/4 of a mile off the race.  Wow.

Here is the link to the results to see how the other 500-plus of us fared: http://www.strictlyrunning.com/results/12JailBreak.txt

I enjoy the Jailbreak event, but they can do two things to improve in the future.  First, move the race up to 7:30 or worst case 8:00.  8:30 is too late this time of  year.  Second, provide a technical T-shirt instead of a cotton shirt.  I like the designs of their shirts, but I personally dislike the Haynes cotton tee they include with the registration fee.  Just doesn’t fit well.

Personal Recap

I had two goals for the race.  The first was to break 22 minutes.  I figured that was out the window when I saw the weather.  I kept a dim hope alive for a PR, which would be to break 22:37.  I came up just short of this with a 22:45.  My mile splits were 6:50, 7:21, and 8:03.    I was hurting by mile one, and you can see the crashing progression.  It was painful.  Not even great live ’80’s music on the playlist could help me.

My other goal was to beat my teenage son.  I did that, but he had such a bad race, there was no fun in that.  I never saw him once the gun went off, so I honestly wasn’t sure if he was ahead of or behind me.  I guess the epic neck and neck battle at the finish will have to wait until fall sometime.  He’ll be starting his summer cross county running in earnest this week, so by September, he should be well ahead of me.  Probably for good this time.

That is supposed to wrap it up for my spring racing season.  However, right now next Saturday’s weather forecast looks a little cooler.  Maybe I’ll find one last race, so I can end with a PR before summer!

POFIFOTO!

 

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