Bulldog Dash 5K Germantown, IL May 17 2008

(Marvin) I was hoping to do better at this years Bulldog Dash, but I didn't even beat last years time of 19:08. Instead I came in 19:11, 2nd in age 30-34, and 9th/242. I was hoping to get under 19:00 minutes, but knew it was going to be hard after getting mandated for overtime at work on Friday. My sleep, and eating schedule was thrown all out of whack. The bad thing is overtime is always going to be an issue now, and will be something I'll have to work around. This race keeps getting bigger and bigger every year. It also draws some really good runners. The winning time of the race was 15:23! I don't even know if I could run one five minute mile.

(David) I didn’t have a lot of confidence going into this race. Last year I had a time of 20:10 and I didn’t think I could do that again. I was hoping for the mid 20’s. I started the race off conservatively. I felt pretty good for the first mile, time was 6:49. While running I kept thinking that this time could put me around 20 minutes total. Well, I was wrong. I felt good the second mile too and my time was 6:59. I was a little concerned about that time but was afraid to start pushing harder. I had enough energy to pick up my pace and pass two guys at the end. One of my philosophies is; if I have enough energy to sprint at the end of a race, then I didn’t try hard enough the rest of the race. My final time was 21:07, almost one whole minute slower than last year. During the race I wondered why I felt good running. I guess the reason was I wasn’t trying hard enough. I should have been able to at least meet my time of 20:30 from the Waterloo race a couple weeks ago. This all falls back on me not training hard enough. I ended up getting third out of 10 in my age group and 22nd overall. Actually I got fourth in age group because they give top three overall and one of them was in my age group. The results are online at: http://www.runningstartsports.com/results/Bulldog20085krun.htm One thing I need to work on is knowing how fast I am running, i.e. how fast is my seven minute mile. I need to be training more. Last year around this time I had rode 595 miles on my road bike, this year only 302. I am still blaming the weather and lack of motivation for that. I also blame work. But that is a whole other story. I am starting to like the Bulldog Dash more. There were some parts that were not as good, but overall I liked it. The atmosphere is good. There are a lot of runners. The course is fairly flat and the support from the fire department is really good. Plus, everyone running gets a free hamburger or hot dog. Also, a hello to our friend that if she were on our team we could add an "as" to the back of our name...Hi Ashley! Wait, I don't know if that would sound good.