Evansville Days, 5 Mile Run August 9, 2008

(Marvin) First place!!! This is a nice race with a challenging course, but it doesn't attract a lot of people. I don't know if it is the location of Evansville or that it is not advertised well. I would say there was twenty people at the most there. When the race started Dave and I ran together with only one person in front of us. He was a teenager and he took off like he was going to a fire. Dave told me that he talk to him and found out he was only doing two miles, but still we didn't let him pull to far away from us. At the first mile the teen turnaround to head for the finish. After that the race was a relaxed pace. There wasn't any real challengers. Dave and I had a very comfortable lead from the next runner. I had all intentions of running with Dave and even letting him cross the finish first, but at mile 3 we were talking and he told me to go on. I was hesitant, but he told me he didn't want a win where I let him. I would feel the same way, so I picked up the pace and finished first overall with a time of 34:27. This was 15 seconds slower than last year, but this was not an all out effort. I had plenty of energy left over after the race. Maybe next year there will be more people.

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(David) I still think more people should run this race. However, they did change one thing that I liked; last year they gave out trophies and this year they gave medals. I guess you can’t really blame them because they don’t have a whole lot of runners and trophies are more expensive. I’m still not sure why they don’t draw more people. It is a good race. I think Marvin has it right when he wrote that it may be location and lack of advertising. Or maybe it is because the town of Evansville is slanted and that scares people, see picture. My time this year was 35.09, over a minute faster than last year’s. Like Marvin said, we ran together for the first three miles. Our times were 6.36, 6.38, and 7.35. I knew he was running slower because of me so I told him to go on. I was able to keep him in sight most of the time though. I finished 42 seconds behind him. The next person in was over three minutes behind me. It was a good race but with so few challengers it didn’t feel quite right. I got second overall and first in age 35-39. This was the best overall finish that I have had in a race. It is a challenging course with quite a few hills. They are not real tall but a couple of them are steep. Just like last year the volunteers and the other runners were real nice. I just hope they go back to trophies next year.