A couple weeks ago (yeah, I'm behind), J and I and a bunch of friends ran a 5k near our house that involved eating doughnut holes at the midway point, with 30 seconds deducted from one's time per doughnut hole. After more than a year off from any kind of running race, I was curious how I'd do now that I'm a casual runner at most and can no longer train seriously. In the good old pre-spondyloliththesis days, I could pretty much count on a 5K in the low 19s, assuming a few tune-up intervals the week before the race. The Donut Dash was net downhill, with the last mile straight down City Creek to Memory Grove, which masked my decline (the downhill was good for at least a minute). I came in at just about 20, including three doughnut holes at the turn. (Holy cow, the winner of the doughnut division ate 72 holes and finished with a net negative time; meanwhile, my first two holes were easy, but after choking the third down it was already time to say no mas. I think I'll skip the hot-dog eating contest this lifetime) So, in other words, my flat-course time would have been about 21, which means I've lost at least two minutes over 5k in the past year. Sigh. And the worst part is that, because no real runners showed up, if I were still at my peak, I would have had a shot of winning the non-doughnut, time-only division (man, Manhattan was actually a much tougher place to race because all the collegiate-type runners showed up to every race). But seriously, can you imagine anything more annoying that reading a 40-something's blog about how he could have won a race in Salt Lake at some point if he had stayed injury free? Reminds me of the great final, "I could have been a contender" scene in Raging Bull. Start at about 50 seconds ...
I came in 5th, but the race had no age-group medals. And if a race decides to discriminate against Masters, well, then I think it was fine for me to participate in the cookie-stacking contest. I took Jonas and the rest of those kids down!
The race was held on a glorious global warming kind of November day, so we headed to the zoo with Liz and Trafton and Xavier. See you in a few for a longer travel entry ...
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