Last week's tally:
How last week's racers did:
This week's racers:
"I want you to pray as if everything depends on it, but I want you to prepare yourself as if everything depends on you."
-- Dick LeBeau
Lynwood, Richard,
congrats on your PR's at Santa Scramble. How was the crowd?
Lynwood -- did you split the miles evenly or? That is a massive PR! You were musing about the chip time vs. race time and the fact that they did not have a mat at the start --> I think the parade organizers could not afford the time it would take to remove it (last year, when I started this race 1 min 20 sec late, when I got to the start line the police were very quickly getting traffic back on the streets).
Richard -- so I have a theory about why the timing system had you at 19:42 and you saw 19:39 as you crossed the finish line. Perhaps your so thin now that the timing system took a second or two to recognize your chip?
Rob
Rob, I don't remember the crowd being huge this year, but I was so focused on running, I barely noticed anybody. If I had any adoring fans yelling "LYNWOOD", I just didn't hear 'em. I know they were there though.
I fell in behind one guy, and one really cute girl and stuck with them, as I noticed they kept looking at their Garmins. Seemed like a good strategy to me, as I suspected we were close to 7. We crossed the first mile, and in usual high-tech Santa Scramble technology, the girl standing beside the road holding a watch, yelled out 6:55. Cool. I figured I had good motivation to keep running where I was. We hit the two mile point at 13:51, as the 2 mile guy yelled it out just as I passed him. The girl I was running behind started slowing down here unfortunately, so I jumped in behind the guy. Not the 2 mile guy, as he had a job to do. The guy I started running with. I guess I speeded up a little more with the easier mile at about 6:46 I think, then the sprint to the finish.
I have a feeling none of our Santa Scramble PR's are going to hold up in court. I didn't get my Garmin started until maybe a quarter mile into the race because of the surprise start but one person said there Garmin had it at 3.04 miles and another said 3.08, so apparently it's somewhat short. I'll still count it as my PR though without worrying about an asterisk. I figure I'll run the races and I'll let the people in charge tell me where the finish line is. I'm under no illusion that I'm going to start running sub 20-minute 5k's though. I'm happy staying under 21 minutes for as long as possible.
This week I have two races...
old-runner -- Southpark Turkey Trot 8k (11/24/11) -- Goals: (A) Under 33:28 (present PR); (B) Sub 34:00 (C) Sub 35:00
old-runner -- Elf Stampede 5k (Spindale, NC - 11/26/11) -- Goals: (A) Sub 21:00; (B) Sub 22:00; (C) to beat 88-year-old Margaret Hagerty.
Richard Hefner Past Race Results (Athlinks)
Barely made my goal in both of my races this week...
33:13 in the Turkey Trot 8k at Southpark (6:41 pace)
20:50 in the Elf 5k in Spindale (6:43 pace)
Only managed to get 7th place in my age group in the Turkey Trot but was 161st out of 4,853 runners, so I guess that's pretty good. Lots of fast guys there standing in line to teach me a lesson including the age group winner, 58-year-old Jerry Clark who broke a North Carolina state age group record with 28:57!