(Executive summary - did awful, gave up running, bought bowling shoes and a stupid-looking shirt)

Saturday was the 3rd Emma's Run in Anthem, AZ, as part of the Anthem Day's celebration.

While living in Anthem, I was always training for some halfathon, so I never bothered to run this thing; now that I live in New River, Anthem is like a trip to Disneyland (they have flush toilets and cell phone coverage and *everything*) so I started to sign up for this -

- then Ethel put the kibosh on it because she was saving every spare penny (she got really tight-fisted) so I cancelled my plans -

- then a certain meddling Dead Runner decided that I needed to race a 10K more than he needed twenty bucks, so HE paid my race entry fee, and I was back on the hook :)

By the time the race came around, I didn't want to do it, because...well, for one thing, it was windy the day before, with the forecast saying that the wind was going to continue through the next day.

But the main reason that I didn't want to run it was that I've moved my running career into the "active denial" phase, where I'll actually go to lengths to keep from finding out how bad it's really gotten.

My last 10K, at the WC in Tucson four years ago, was even hillier than this one, and hotter - I'd run that as a PW at 45:40 (7:22 pace) and realized that I was probably looking at Yet Another Personal Worst in this next race.

But having the entry fee paid for me sort of obligated me.

Emma's Run has a 5K and 10K, with the 10K race being two loops, and starting 10 minutes earlier. Both loops go uphill for a mile, downhill for a mile, and level or so for a mile.

...The race started uphill, into the wind,  for a mile, and I hit that first mile right under 7:20, then turned downhill and caught the next two miles faster, so that I came through the three mile mark at 6:59 average pace (20:58). Turns out that that was too fast, because now I was in the second loop, and running that uphill mile again.

Got to the top of that fourth mile at something like 8:20, and knew that Church Was Out, and started to just sort of let things slack off, but didn't do so - I don't know why.

The lady whom I had assumed was the first master's female was just in front of me - she had moved out well ahead earlier, and now she was falling back. So, as I caught up to her, I said "Oh, no ma'am - speed back up. I'm counting on your legs getting me under 45 minutes!"

She allowed as to how that wasn't happening, so I said "well, we can't let you slow down - fall in behind me and I'll break wind for you". And she did so, to my surprise.

Then we ran into the major hurdle of the last third of the race - 5K walkers.

Zillions of 'em. All walking beside each other.

Were it just me, then I would have meandered around 'em, or used them as an excuse for going slower - but now I had a mission; bringing along the lead master's female, so I started hollering "ON YOUR LEFT!" or "ON YOUR RIGHT!" or "TRACK!" to clear out the folks so that the nice lady didn't have to run around these people.

(I heard her behind me, telling somebody "Yeah, I'm running behind this Marine guy". I have no idea where she got that idea. I was in the Army :)

This kept up for the next mile-and-a-half, until we started up the last 1/4 mile or so of uphill back to the finish line; things thinned out there, and so I just kept pushing, even though I knew that I had slowed down a lot.

At this time, I had Evanescence on the headphones, "Bring Me To Life" - and so, while heading up that hill, I would yell the male parts in the chorus...

"WAKE ME UP!"
"I CAN"T WAKE UP!"
"SAAAVE ME!"

..which would be weird no matter what - but must have really sounded strange to folks who couldn't hear the rest of the music. "Mama! Mama! There's some mean-looking bald dude running at me yelling "SAAAVE ME!" - looking back at it, I'm glad that I didn't get arrested :)

The nice Master's lady moved ahead me on the way up the hill, and she finished in 46:03; I finished in 46:08, which was a 7:26 pace, and, given that I went out too fast, it was hilly, it was windy, and I'm really old, fat, bald and slow, I'll have to accept that time as being "less rewarding than a bad marriage, but not as bad as it might have been". And while it is YAPW (Yet Another Personal Worst) it's also a geezer PR ("geezer" being us over 50 folk).

After crossing the finish line, the nice Master's lady thanked me, and I walked away, unable to think straight. I had really left most everything there on the course, and - while I had plans of going for a cooldown run, and then doing my lifting - I lost interest in both. I did go check the results to see how Patrick the Tree-Top Ecto had done, but they didn't have the age-group times up yet (which made sense, as folks were still coming in  - as it turned out - he'd run two minutes faster than I, and took second place in the 50-59 age group).

Then, looking at the women's overall winners, I saw something which completely amazed me - a 50-59 female who ran the 10K in 33 mnutes, with a poseted average page of 5:13 .

Wow.

I can say it backwards - woW.

Later, looking at the results, I found out that, yes, that nice Master's lady had, indeed, won the master's division, and there was no mention of the Mystery Woman who ran that 5:13 pace. I have no idea what happened to her - did Fox and Scully show up and escort her off to some reservation in the Nevada desert?¹

At the time, I was very discouraged in my race, but that was because I had misremembered my previous results by 1:20 (I thought it was a 44:20, when it was actually a 45:40) so I figured that I'd slowed down 20+ seconds/mile in four years, rather than 4 second/mile. When I found that out, I reckon I decided that that wasn't as bad as it might have been, and so I figured that I might as well keep running, since I spent all that money on the treadmill.

When I got home, I finished up my weekly mileage on the aforementioned treadmill, and was able to restructure my emotional state somewhat; having gone through those first three miles under 7 minute pace, I think that maybe - just maybe - a sub-20 5K isn't completely out of the question, if I can find a nice, flat course with good weather, do some speedowrk, and lose twenty pounds and ten years.

I did notice that the 50+ male age group winner at Emma's  5K ran 23: something, which means that I would have won that age group had I raced the 5K instead of the 10K; however, I'm also aware that everybody ELSE in my age group has seen the results and is thinking the same thing, so they'll ALL be signed up for the 5K next year, which means that I should run the 10K - unless, of course, they realize the same thing, which means that, clearly, I have to run the 10K, instead...(if this sounds to you like Vissini explaining the two glasses of wine to the Man in Black, all I can say is that, when I took the Myers-Briggs personality test, the lady who gave me the test showed me the clip of that scene, and said that that exemplified my personality type.  And some folks think that I have low self-esteem! It's not LOW, it's ACCURATE :)

So now I'll start looking for a 5K out there, somewhere - sometime after that magical, mythical future date when I Will Be In Shape Again (tm).


¹On reflection, I've come up with a theory - that she had shifted from the 10K to the 5K, but that the change never got registered  and probably ran the 5K in 23 mnutes, which (since the 5K started ten minutes after the 10K)  would have shown her running the 10K in 33 minutes. That's my theory, anyway. Since the USAT&F posted female record, 50-54 age group, for the 10,000 meters is 37:12, I'm suspected that, had a woman broken that by 4 minutes on a hilly course on a windy day, somebody would have mentioned it :)