Happy 4th of July, people!
The 4th of July is one of the most popular days of the year to run a race in America (Thanksgiving being the most popular), so I had plenty of races to choose from this morning. Naturally I went with the closest one to me, the Haddon Heights Firecracker 5k, and roped Stevie and Neale into joining me.
We'd actually tried to do this race last year, but had assumed it started at 9. Thankfully we hadn't preregistered then, either.
We got to Haddon Heights around 7:30 this morning, parked on a side street, and walked to the start to register. Day-of registration costs only $25 for this race. You get a tech race shirt, bananas and bottles of water after finishing, medals for age group winners and cash prizes for overall winners, lots of country music at the finish area, and that's about it.
This is a very competitive race, with the top ten runners all finishing under 18 minutes. The winner finished in 15:36. I haven't broken 19 minutes in the 5k in over five years now, but maybe with a little training I can get there.
When we started, there was a man pushing a double stroller who dropped his iPhone. He stopped for a brief second to look back, but decided to keep going instead of picking it up, so I swooped down to grab it for him when I passed it. I had every intention of catching up to him and handing it to him, but I simply couldn't catch up with him, so I ran the entire race with his phone in my hand and gave it back to him at the finish.
The course was a standard suburban neighborhood 5k - lots of shaded streets, lots of turns, some minor hills. There were no clocks on the course, or even mile markers, so I had to run by feel as much as I could.
I passed running friend Liz around mile two (her race recap is here) and took out two more runners in the homestretch to finish in 19:43 (though for some reason I'm listed in the official results as finishing in 19:26). 21st overall (out of 269) and 6th in my age group (out of 20).
Here's an incredibly flattering screenshot of me finishing:
If you click here you can go to the video and watch every person finish.
Then I went back out onto the course to look for Stevie and Neale and run in with them. Stevie finished in 33:16.
After the race we let Neale play on the playground at the finish area, then walked back to our car only to discover we were blocked in by the Haddon Heights parade route. So we sat on the curb for twenty minutes watching the floats go by before things cleared out and we could go home.
The afternoon barbecue we'd been invited to had been cancelled due to inclement weather, so I fired up our own grill in our backyard and grilled hamburgers and hotdogs and drank Budweiser beer.
All in all, not a bad Independence Day. Happy birthday, America!
The 4th of July is one of the most popular days of the year to run a race in America (Thanksgiving being the most popular), so I had plenty of races to choose from this morning. Naturally I went with the closest one to me, the Haddon Heights Firecracker 5k, and roped Stevie and Neale into joining me.
We'd actually tried to do this race last year, but had assumed it started at 9. Thankfully we hadn't preregistered then, either.
We got to Haddon Heights around 7:30 this morning, parked on a side street, and walked to the start to register. Day-of registration costs only $25 for this race. You get a tech race shirt, bananas and bottles of water after finishing, medals for age group winners and cash prizes for overall winners, lots of country music at the finish area, and that's about it.
This is a very competitive race, with the top ten runners all finishing under 18 minutes. The winner finished in 15:36. I haven't broken 19 minutes in the 5k in over five years now, but maybe with a little training I can get there.
When we started, there was a man pushing a double stroller who dropped his iPhone. He stopped for a brief second to look back, but decided to keep going instead of picking it up, so I swooped down to grab it for him when I passed it. I had every intention of catching up to him and handing it to him, but I simply couldn't catch up with him, so I ran the entire race with his phone in my hand and gave it back to him at the finish.
The course was a standard suburban neighborhood 5k - lots of shaded streets, lots of turns, some minor hills. There were no clocks on the course, or even mile markers, so I had to run by feel as much as I could.
I passed running friend Liz around mile two (her race recap is here) and took out two more runners in the homestretch to finish in 19:43 (though for some reason I'm listed in the official results as finishing in 19:26). 21st overall (out of 269) and 6th in my age group (out of 20).
Here's an incredibly flattering screenshot of me finishing:
If you click here you can go to the video and watch every person finish.
Then I went back out onto the course to look for Stevie and Neale and run in with them. Stevie finished in 33:16.
After the race we let Neale play on the playground at the finish area, then walked back to our car only to discover we were blocked in by the Haddon Heights parade route. So we sat on the curb for twenty minutes watching the floats go by before things cleared out and we could go home.
The afternoon barbecue we'd been invited to had been cancelled due to inclement weather, so I fired up our own grill in our backyard and grilled hamburgers and hotdogs and drank Budweiser beer.
All in all, not a bad Independence Day. Happy birthday, America!
That was so nice of you to pick up that guy's phone! I'm surprised he left it. You ran a really great race and paced yourself much better than I did. I love running with so many fast runners, because it really does seem to pull you through the race more quickly (even if you aren't actually running any faster). See you at group run!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'll take a no frills race like this with really good competition over a gimmicky (and more expensive) race any day. Looking forward to doing more 5k's this year and hopefully lowering my time, maybe even PR.
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