Oklahoma City has a pretty great annual Greek Festival. I've been before and there's dancing, art, tours of a Greek Orthodox church, but most importantly, food. OMG, the food. One of my favorite bloggers, Jennie runs with a group called Running to Drink and I imagine I'm the lone member of a Running to Eat All the Hummus group. Anyone want to join a hummus fan club/running group? The bib fee for this race includes free entry into the festival (ie, hummus), so when I saw that I immediately logged into SignMeUp.com and registered.
The race started at 8:30, which seemed a little risky to me. Sometimes in mid-September Oklahoma is cooling down already, but sometimes it is still thousands of degrees, so I felt great anxiety about signing up for a race that started two full hours after my normal running start time. It turns out I was worried for nothing because the weather was great for running. It was 59 degrees and drizzly.
I woke up a little before 7, got dressed, gave the cats some ear scratches, and ate a banana spread with peanut butter. I got to the race site a little before 8, picked up my bib and chip, and milled around stretching. I met up with a guy from work, Robert, who runs a 5k just about every weekend this time of year. I jogged a little bit to warm up and then it was time to start! Robert and I started together, but he took off ahead of me around the half mile mark. The course ran down a main street into a neighborhood, so there wasn't much scenery to enjoy. Around mile 1.5 I caught up with Robert and then passed him. I knew I was pretty close to the front and passed a woman about my age who I'd been neck and neck with for about a mile. Around mile 2.5 I started to feel a little nauseous. This has happened to me before at 5ks. I don't know if it's from pushing myself harder than I'm used to, or nerves leading up to the race, but I knew I wasn't far from the finish so I backed off a little bit on speed and just concentrated on keeping my feet moving. The girl I passed earlier came out of nowhere and was ahead of me. With the way I was feeling I knew I couldn't catch back up with her and she ended up finishing just a few seconds faster than I did.
At the finish I looked down at my GPS and it said 24:13. A PR! I was surprised when the results were posted and it showed my gun time at 24:48. I would still be perfectly happy with 24:48, but it seemed like a big difference. Several people were complaining that their gun time was off their GPS time and everyone was saying it was by about 30 seconds. The race organizer blew it off at the time, but I got a call later from someone with the timing company who said that the person who shot the starting gun was using a watch without a second hand, so they just assumed it was at 8:30:00, but many people had come to them saying their time was off. They were calling people to ask if they had used a GPS and then used that the determine when the starting gun was actually fired. The results online put my time at 24:13, so that's what I'm sticking with!
I ended up as the third place women's finisher and won a $15 gift card to a local running store. I drank some water, talked to Robert for a bit, and then got in my car. The festival didn't actually start until noon, so anyone wanting to attend is supposed to wear their race shirt when they go back for free admission. Saturday is normally my long run day, so I planned to run again after the race. I drove to Lake Hefner, which is on my way home and has nice trails for bicyclists, runners, and walkers. On the way there I drink some more water and ate a pack of Justin's chocolate peanut butter. My first mile at the lake was pretty rough, but after that I got into a rhythm and the time flew. I intended to get in 5 more miles, but I didn't turn around soon enough so by the time I made it back to my car I had run about 5.6 miles. 3.1+5.6= 8.7 AND I get to go back to the Greek Festival this weekend and eat my hummus. Great Saturday!
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