2016 Rachel's Helping Hands 5K

Advertised As Flat and Fast

Advertised as flat and fast is misleading, if not down right deceptive. I sometimes train at the park where the race is held. There are several long, gradual slopes to run up and the finish is 400m up one of the larger hills in the park. Unfortunately I continued my habit this year of being ill prepared for the race. My mileage dropped even lower than it had been and at one point I did not run for seven days straight. I wasn't injured or ill; I just didn't feel like running. I buried myself in reading, frequenting the running forums, and playing computer games. Then the day before, I ran much too hard while cheering the Immaculata University cross country teams at D3 regionals. My legs feel dead and I'm even a bit sore. When I registered for the race I anticipated a possible sub-30:00 time. In my current state of mind and the way I feel, I may be fortunate to run 33:00. At least with a 10:00 am start Sunday morning, I should get a good night's sleep.

The alarm went off much too early. I feel no more rested and ready to race than when I went to bed. After my normal breakfast of cereal and two mugs of coffee I make the 15 minute drive to the race. It didn't help that the soreness I'd felt on Saturday seemed to be a strain that left me almost hobbling as I'm jogging over to pick up my packet only to discover that I'd misread the race info and it started at 9:00 am, not 10:00 am. This dawned on me as I heard the gun sound and saw the race start. I quickly found the registration table, got my number and pinned it on. As I passed my car about a quarter mile into the race I dropped off my jacket and race t-shirt losing a few more seconds to go with the more than 3 minutes I'd already lost getting started.

My biggest concern, besides the race turning into a solo time trial, was that I'd push too hard the first half trying to catch up to the back of the pack. It didn't help that the first 500-600m were mostly up hill and there were walkers I had to weave around. It wasn't until a good half mile into the race that I had my first down hill and could see far enough ahead to espy what I thought were the back of the pack runners. I eventually caught them just before the mile (10:03) on another long, gradually incline. As I reached the turn around on this out and back section a car unrelated to the race had stopped because of the runners, but he was next to the cone making it difficult to make the turn. I wondering what else can possibly go wrong at this point when he rolls down his window to ask something. I didn't really hear the specifics and just yelled that there was a race in progress and the road was closed. Naturally there were no volunteers there to redirect traffic.

I tried to take advantage of the mild decline after the turn around, then a sharper downhill approaching the halfway point before reaching the next uphill. I was actually catching up to and passing runners at this point. I was also beginning to wonder how much longer I could hold this pace, especially with several small uphills and the uphill finish ahead of me. Shortly after the top of the next hill I passed the 2-mile in 20:18 (10:15 split). I'm glad I sometimes train here because I at least know what's ahead of me: two small hills then a long downhill before the uphill finish. I feel like I'm slowing even though I'm still trying to use the downhill to speed up. I set my sights on several runners I can see ahead of me and start catching them one by one. I'm finally closing on the last one I can see within reach when we start the final uphill push. Now I'm not making anymore progress and can only hope I can muster at least a semblance of a sprint at the top when it flattens out a little over the last 100m. Nope. Whatever I can muster in the way of speed barely rates being called that. I cross the finish in 31:12 by my watch.

Post race festivities are minimal. There's water and soft pretzels. When I check the posted results they only have the top 50 listed so far along with the top three men and women. There are no age group awards as I learned when they made the awards announcement. Still no second page posted with more results so I ask about that. One of the staff runs over to the timer to get the rest of the results and when I check them my name is missing. All I can figure is somehow I'm missing because of my late start. I jog over to the timer to find out what's going on. It just so happens that he's the same timer I've met the last couple years at the Nun Run 5K and he remembers me. He checks and eventually finds on his results in the computer. Apparently since the results are listed by chip time, my delayed start meant that when page one was printed I hadn't finished yet. Once I finished my chip time displaced the last finisher on page one and he slipped to page two. Problem solved.

With what appears to be a strain that hurts when I run, I may scratch the rest of my race plans for the year. It depends on how quickly it heals and whether I'll be able to do more than run easy without pain or it affecting my stride.