glorious Race Report

The Glorious Gallop 5K was held last night in East Hampton, and after hearing about this race for a few years, I finally ran it. So was it actually "Glorious"?

First let me give myself credit for setting a new, 9 second, 5k PR at 18:18. So it’s a PR, and I am not allowed to complain, yet somehow, I am not thrilled.

I had heard about this course and wanted to run it, as it has a lot of down hill to it and figured it would be an easy PR. In that regard the course was Glorious. The weather was glorious too, for a July night in the low 70’s. However, I was a bit disappointed, as with the course and the day I felt I could have gone under 18 min if things went well. This is a point to point race, ala Boston. So I boarded a shuttle bus and headed up to the start. The course organizers were a little sketchy as the official start line was determined to be a temporary real estate sign on some one’s lawn. The course started out with a screaming down hill that left the bottom of my feet just burning with heat. The organizers did not feel it necessary to put out mile markers which really bugged me and messed me up mentally a little as I ran. So its hard to give the mile by mile post mortem or splits. But I think I can safely say that I hammered the first downhill mile, held steady for most of mile two, up until I got a bit of a stitch in my side and slowed just enough to let a runner pass and gap me. I think my legs were a little shot still from the fast track workout on Tuesday. But perhaps not. For some reason I did not recognize that it was the same guy that I out sprinted at the finish of my last 5K. I finished with runners 4, 6 and 7 seconds ahead of me. Although at the time they seemed to be really far ahead. As most of my fans could have guessed, this once again placed me 4^th in my age group.

I define a Glorious race as one where I take a huge risk, against odds, and somehow make it work, or die the death of the proud warrior. I fought at this race, and was suffering at the end. But I ran a somewhat safe race, and did not get full the blood lust of battle. No fights were consciously avoided, yet for some reason, it did not occur to me kill myself trying to catch the runners in front of me, until it was too late. I did not punk out, yet I did not really risk it and step up. Let’s call it glorious with a small "g".