Woo Hoo! I got my train whistle! But more about that later. Last year I could not make it because I got mandated to work the night before. The bad thing is I got mandated to work the night of this race so after I got home from the race I had to work 16 hours. That was no fun. The race starts at 9:00 but one has to get there early to sign in at Vienna and then get up to Tunnel Hill for the start. Once we got to Tunnel Hill there was a problem, there were only two restrooms. This could be bad considering there are 200 runners for the race. Good thing I’m a guy and the course is surrounded by woods.
During the race, one problem I ran into was with my Garmin. I had charged it and then ran two other times, but when I turned it on that day it said “low battery”. I was hoping to get at least halfway through the race before it died but I didn’t. We were at the starting line, I look down and it was off. I pressed the power button, but nothing. This was pretty frustrating. When I first got my Garmin I didn’t think I would use it too much, but now I think it is my best training tool. When it wouldn’t work, I was worried. My plan was to run between 7:00 and 7:30 minute miles. With my Garmin not working I wouldn’t be able to know my time. All the miles are marked, but now I didn’t even have a watch to let me know how long it took between marks. I just started to run at a pace that I thought was good. After a mile or two I started running with another runner. He had a Garmin that worked, so at mile five I asked him the time. He told me 35:20. If I kept this up it would put me at 1:10:40, which is faster than I thought I would finish. This made me feel a lot better. Somewhere around mile six I saw Marvin ahead of me. I knew if I was catching up to him he had a problem. I ran ahead of the guy I was running with and caught up to Marvin. He was hurting, side stitch and said he even walked a little. I tried to motivate him so we ran until mile seven and then he told me to go ahead. I still felt good, passed a runner and caught up to another. We ran together until a little past mile nine. I was worried he was in my age group so when I knew we had a ½ to ¾ of a mile to go I sped up. This was a gamble because I didn’t want to bonk before the end. I made it o.k. My final time was 1:12:00. I was extremely happy with that time. It was almost two minutes faster than two years ago. I got second in age 40-44 and 20th overall. I got my train whistle! If you place in your age group you get a wooden whistle that sounds like a train whistle when you blow it. I never thought I would get one. I think I lucked out because for a longer distance I am in a very strong age group. I thought at one time I could maybe get third in age, but never second. I was very happy.
I don’t know if it was good or bad that my Garmin screwed up. On one hand I just ran at a pace that I thought was comfortable and did well. On the other hand maybe I could have run faster knowing my time was closer to 7:00 minute miles. I could have tried harder and got under that. Oh well, I am not going to complain. This year I ran a half marathon and now this 10 miler. I never thought of myself as a distance runner but now I want to more of these. I just wish work wouldn’t interfere with it.
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