Sesser Homecoming 5K, June 21, 2008

(David) This was the first 5K race Sesser sponsored, and you could tell. I won’t go into all of the details, but I may mention a few. The most important parts of the race were ok. I guess that’s all that matters. The race started five or ten minutes late, due to fog. That was fine, it gave me more time to prepare, i.e. run warm up, stretch. You had to be on your toes for the start though. If you weren’t paying attention you could have missed it. The race started at the custard stand and then went west onto some back roads. There were a few hills but the majority of the course was flat. I just tried to keep Marvin in sight. We started off close but then he took a little lead. I felt pretty good but wasn’t sure if I was pushing too hard or not enough. There were no mile marks, so I couldn’t really tell how far I went, or had left to go. I looked at my watch a few times but that couldn’t really tell me how far I had gone because I didn’t know how fast I was running. Once I looked and my watch showed 11 minutes. All that told me was that I was somewhere along mile two, maybe the beginning, maybe the end. Through most of the race I heard someone right behind me. Finally the guy passed me. I was still feeling ok so I paced him. After less than half a mile I was almost right behind him so I passed him. This actually got me a little closer to Marvin. We were getting back into town and the guy was still on my tail. I still didn’t know how much farther we had to go so I just maintained. We turned a corner and I could see the finish. Apparently the guy behind me also saw it because I could hear him speed up. I tried to pick my legs up and go faster but it was tough. I could still hear him behind me. I think I ended up beating him by two seconds. My final time was 19:18, a new personal record. Marvin beat me by eight seconds. I’m not sure what made this race so good. I think one reason was that I paced Marvin. When he doesn’t run I’m not sure how fast to go so I just kind of run. When he does run I know he will run in the 19’s, sometimes 18’s, so I try to keep him in sight. I do know I have been very inconsistent this year, last week’s time was 22:04. Marvin finished third overall and I finished fourth. He finished first in age 30-34 and I finished first in 35-50. Yea, you read that right. Marvin had a five year age group and I got a 16 year age group. I hope that changes. They only gave out first place medals. They did have quite a few attendance prizes, we didn’t win. Also, the goody bags were good. They did some good stuff for the race. I just hope they improve on other stuff.



(Marvin) I wasn't planning on doing this race because of work, but I was able to leave work an hour early to make the start time. The bad thing was that Friday evening I went out and did my training run. It was 3 miles easy pace. This day was cooler with lots of fog which meant that it was muggy..yuck.. The course was not too bad to run, mostly flat with long slight incline hills. I started out not too fast, just fast enough to see how the postions were going to fall. I fell into the third postion overall and knew that would be about the best for me at this race. With it being Sesser's first race I was hoping to strike gold for first place overall, but that was not the case. My legs were feeling very heavy during this race and I was feeling physically tired from the training run earlier and working third shift. Near the third mile on a turn in the road I could hear Dave give a runner an encoraging word to "catch him" (meaning me.) "Thanks Dave" >: ( The coarse turned into a gradual incline climb about 1/2 a mile or so. I could hear the runner getting close behind me. What I didn't know was that Dave passed the runner who he encouraged and was making a surge for me "Good strategy Dave break the guys spirit" : ) When I was running up that hill I had a weird feeling come over my body and not the good kind. I had a funny tingling in my chest up to my head that I never felt before. I slowed my pace to recover and after a while it went away. I think that it was from being tired and as the day drew on the sun was heating things up. I had a couple of bouts with heat exhaustion in my youth and it doesn't take long for a warm or hot day to effect my performance. That's why I hate summer time races. As I drew closer to the finish I could hear the guy behind me (Dave) trying to catch up, but when I knew it was almost over I poured it on. To my surprise there was Dave eight seconds behind me. I had a finish time of 19:10 3/100 overall First in age 30-34. I was surprised that I ran that well and wonder how fast I would have ran with proper rest.