Bill Menees's Blog

This morning about 8:15am, one of Amy's friends called and asked if we wanted to run in today's "Fangtastic 5K" race. She had two extra registrations (from friends that had backed out due to illness), and she said we could use their spots for free. We hadn't done any preparation for the race, of course, but we can't turn down a good bargain. So we went, ran, and lived to tell about it.

It was 32 degrees during the run. Most of the uphill parts were in the first half of the race. I ran almost 2 miles before I had to start walking for a minute or two. I was going up the hill on James Robertson Parkway, and it seemed to go on forever! After that the course was mostly downhill through Printer's Alley, 2nd Avenue, and then finishing up back at the GEC.

Unfortunately, the last 1/4 mile was uphill, but I tried to pick up my pace as much as I could there. In that last stretch I passed a couple of spots where someone had blown chunks, and I heard a few other people grumbling about having an uphill finish. I thought it was tough, but then I've never raced before.

One cool thing I hadn't expected was that they used ChampionChip Timing. You attach a timer to your shoe, and it tracks the time from when you cross the start line until you cross the finish line. That's nice since there were 2200 people running today, and it took us almost 3 minutes to get to the start line.

Overall, it was a lot of fun. About 10 minutes after the race, I said, "I'm glad I ran both races today: my first and last." But that was just the cold, the fatigue, and the really nasty (but free!) "Cool Blue Gatorade" talking. But now that I've had time to rest, reflect, and start getting sore, I'm thinking I might want to run another one soon. I don't enjoy running, but it's a fun accomplishment after it's over.

The overall race results are available from Nashville Striders. I've listed the results for Amy and me below. Unfortunately, since we used two other people's registrations, the official race results don't list our names. But I have the "bibs" to prove that we did it! We didn't get the t-shirts because they went to the people that actually paid for the registrations, which seems fair.

• Bill (running as #963 Malinda Ralls): chip time 34:21, pace 11:05, overall 1048.
• Amy (running as #1868 Cassandra Ralls): chip time 40:20, pace 13:01, overall 1251.

Update: The Striders have posted pictures now. You can see me in the back with the red cap in picture 324. You can see Amy in the back left of picture 401. Our friend Stacie, who invited us to run, is in picture 340.

Labels: Running