Oh bother

Let me take a moment to tell you about my Thanksgiving Day Race, which I entered as an Athena thanks to some non-holiday second helpings of late. In years past, a finish of 59:00 in this 10k would result in a top 10% finish among Athenas, so my goal was to break an hour since I haven't been running much. My last 10k was 50:04 in February but that was because I was doing a lot of speedwork and in full IM AZ training mode-- not a reasonable goal for my recent activity. Besides, ConocoPhillips is pretty flat with only 2 hills while T-Day had one steep short hill and three bridges to cross. How can a race cross the Ohio three times and still end up on the Ohio side of the river? MAGIC!

The race was at 9 on Thursday morning, and race day registration (what? haven't seen this recently since tri's sell out and long road races don't offer it), the post party, restrooms, etc was in Paul Brown Stadium, where the Bengals play. This totally rocked because you could warm up/relieve yourself in the comfort of a warm toilet-filled restroom rather than a cold dirty port-a-let. I got there early (free parking too!), goofed off for awhile, and then headed to the start line. I was about 5 feet behind the 9:00/mile sign, thinking that 9:30 or so wasn't out of my range. After standing there for 20 minutes the race started right on time. My first mile felt awful since my feet had gone numb in the shadows of the other folks waiting at the start line. I also got really hot and removed my gloves, headband thingy, and rolled up my long sleeves within five minutes. I don't run in much more than a cotton tee and running shorts til it gets below 40, but I was afraid I'd become a cold runner wuss. I hadn't. Anyway, my first mile was a painful 9:45, so I decided I was just going to have a nice comfy slow run the rest of the way. Then my mile splits got awesomer: 9:00, 9:24, 9:24, 8:58, and 8:30. I finished up in a respectable 56:37 (and with a nice negative split), 175th of 750ish 25-29 year olds. And in the Athenas? I'll never know. I thought it was weird I didn't get to weigh in when I picked up my packet, but I expected to still have an Athena division considering there were 12,000 competitors out there (and the guy I started with had registered as a Clydesdale). I was wrong. The results came up with me in my age group and the awards list contained no weight divisions. I think there's a valuable lesson to learn there: lose weight.

After I finished I headed to the post race party. I finally took off my hot wind pants (which I had over my tights), tied off the ankles, and got in the feast line. First I got an ice cream cone, a bottle of water--then I got to work collecting sunflower seeds, apple dippers (McD's was a sponsor) cookies, string cheese, granola bars, and orange juice. There were also bagels, but I really don't care much for them (especially because I'd had one for breakfast). I left with carrying my booty-stuffed pants and feeling good about my run.

So if you're ever in Cincinnati on Thanksgiving, well, I'm sorry about your luck. But if you can dig yourself out of your dismay for being here, head out to the Thanksgiving Day Race. It's cheap (you don't HAVE to get a shirt, which is a relief to anyone with 183,307 race t-shirts), fun, accessible, and has a killer buffet of food afterward. Hard to beat that with a stick.

Now I'm gonna go hit Donatos like it's going out of style-- which you could argue it is since I can't find the stuff anywhere but the 'Nati. :)