My First 12.81K
Yesterday I drove down to Fairfax, VA to spend New Years Eve with my friends Audrey, Dave, Noah, Sheila, and Brice. After eating at PJ Skidoo's, a restaurant filled with octogenarians and other people who don't like having fun on New Year's Eve, we went to Audrey and Dave's house and watched a really funny horror film that Brice recommended called "Manos" - Hands of Fate. It was comentated by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 people and it made me laugh so hard my throat hurt. I haven't laughed that hard in a while. At around midnight we all said Happy New Year in complete sobriety and finished watching this abortion of a movie. I suggested at dinner that we might find a Bingo game later to kick the night into overdrive, but Dave didn't think that was funny.
Dave had the Crab Cakes for dinner and because he has a "sensitive stomach", he got really sick and threw up in the middle of the night. At around 1 AM, I headed to bed because Dave and I were going to run a 10K in the morning. I decided to check my email before going to sleep, but couldn't reach my servers. I did some tests and determined that either MCI was having a large-scale outage or my router had died. I called MCI and after getting some snobby remarks from them, I realized my router was down. My friend Mike called me around 4 or 5 AM and let me know that he had noticed the same thing and he offered to visit the Data Center to check the status of things. He was nice enough to go check the router and found that a UPS it was plugged into had finally kicked the bucket. Mike plugged the router in elsewhere and I was back in business. At 5:45 AM, I could finally get some sleep before waking up at 8:30 AM to get ready for the 10K.
The 10K was the Rotary Resolution 10K Adventure in Leesburg, Virginia. It was some kind of special event for Virginians because the course went through some rich jerk's yard and he only lets people run through his yard once a year. Things are a little slower in Virginia and they get excited about things like running through some rich jerk's yard. But, unfortunately, they were so excited that they forgot to put a course marshal at a very crucial spot in the 10K. As a result, the leaders of the race ended up running way up a hill, around a little patch of grass, and way back down the hill before turning at the appropriate spot. This little detour added nearly 2 miles to the overall course length. Some of the people in the race said they had run an extra 2.5 miles, but I think that's just Virginian math.
I started the race with Dave, who was wearing his Soprano's Special Edition Adidas Track Suit, but after about 2 miles I couldn't keep up his pace and he moved ahead. I really wasn't sure I would be able to finish the 10K, (remember, a 10K is 6.2 miles) because I had only ever run 5 miles before. My goal was just to finish the 6.2 miles. At around 4 miles I heard some of the fast dudes saying something like "I don't think we were supposed to run up there." I wasn't sure what that was about until I got back to the detour point and the newly positioned marshal said "we've got 2 bonus miles today, people". I was really psychologically ready to run another 1.5 miles to the end and be done, but now I had 3.5 miles to go. I just kept plodding along.
My pace was pretty decent throughout the race. It started out around 9:30 and dropped to as low at 7:30 and then later went as high at 11:30 or 12. In the last mile, my hip and knee joints felt like they were going to freeze up. Nothing really hurt too bad, but I could tell I was going to be really sore. When I finished my skin was coated with a salty-sweat powder. I was reading that this is a sign that you're dehydrating quickly and not drinking enough water. I saw one guy at around mile 5 start to walk. He seemed to be in better shape than me and I yelled "Hey! No walking! Come on, let's go!". Someone had done this for me in the NYC Biathlon and I really appreciated it. He started running again and it actually made me move a little faster. I guess I felt like if I'm gonna tell some dude to keep moving, that I should at least lead the way. That felt pretty good.
During the last 2 miles, I was running alongside a 70 year old guy. On the flat parts he would pull ahead of me and then on the hills, he would fall behind me. Every time I caught up to him, I'd say "You again?!". He thought that was funny. The last 1/4 mile of the run was at the top of the hill. He said something like, "You're gonna pull ahead of me on that hill - it's all yours." I kicked it up a notch and charged up the hill. I saw Dave waiting on the side about 300 feet in front of the finish line. He yelled something at me and I tried to kick it up another notch.
In total I ran something like 7.96 miles. I still can't believe it. That's the furthest I've ever run. After the race, I was feeling great. I tried to hydrate and take it easy, but eventually I started to feel nauseous.
Later, I wanted to puke as Audrey showed us around in a driving tour of Arlington, so we stopped at a really cool coffeehouse called Murky Coffee. Noah got a muffin while I tried to stabilize my stomach and read the rants that liberal-minded Arlingtonians had written on the bathroom wall. The stuff written on the walls was amazing - some could have been editorial pieces in the New York Times. There were lots of powerbooks in the place which also made me feel at home. We wrapped things up there and headed back to Audrey and Dave's place for a huge BBQ dinner with Sheila and Brice. Good times.
My time for this unofficial 12.81K was 79:05. My average pace was roughly 9:56. The fact that I was able to finish is just incredible to me and then to have a sub-10:00 pace is just very gratifying.
Rotary Resolution 10K Adventure - Bib # 272
Leesburg, VA
January 1, 2006
Overall Place: 355/471
Age Place: 17/23
Gender Place: 258/318
Pace: 9:56
Complete Results
...and I'm Just Getting Started.
Dave had the Crab Cakes for dinner and because he has a "sensitive stomach", he got really sick and threw up in the middle of the night. At around 1 AM, I headed to bed because Dave and I were going to run a 10K in the morning. I decided to check my email before going to sleep, but couldn't reach my servers. I did some tests and determined that either MCI was having a large-scale outage or my router had died. I called MCI and after getting some snobby remarks from them, I realized my router was down. My friend Mike called me around 4 or 5 AM and let me know that he had noticed the same thing and he offered to visit the Data Center to check the status of things. He was nice enough to go check the router and found that a UPS it was plugged into had finally kicked the bucket. Mike plugged the router in elsewhere and I was back in business. At 5:45 AM, I could finally get some sleep before waking up at 8:30 AM to get ready for the 10K.
The 10K was the Rotary Resolution 10K Adventure in Leesburg, Virginia. It was some kind of special event for Virginians because the course went through some rich jerk's yard and he only lets people run through his yard once a year. Things are a little slower in Virginia and they get excited about things like running through some rich jerk's yard. But, unfortunately, they were so excited that they forgot to put a course marshal at a very crucial spot in the 10K. As a result, the leaders of the race ended up running way up a hill, around a little patch of grass, and way back down the hill before turning at the appropriate spot. This little detour added nearly 2 miles to the overall course length. Some of the people in the race said they had run an extra 2.5 miles, but I think that's just Virginian math.
I started the race with Dave, who was wearing his Soprano's Special Edition Adidas Track Suit, but after about 2 miles I couldn't keep up his pace and he moved ahead. I really wasn't sure I would be able to finish the 10K, (remember, a 10K is 6.2 miles) because I had only ever run 5 miles before. My goal was just to finish the 6.2 miles. At around 4 miles I heard some of the fast dudes saying something like "I don't think we were supposed to run up there." I wasn't sure what that was about until I got back to the detour point and the newly positioned marshal said "we've got 2 bonus miles today, people". I was really psychologically ready to run another 1.5 miles to the end and be done, but now I had 3.5 miles to go. I just kept plodding along.
My pace was pretty decent throughout the race. It started out around 9:30 and dropped to as low at 7:30 and then later went as high at 11:30 or 12. In the last mile, my hip and knee joints felt like they were going to freeze up. Nothing really hurt too bad, but I could tell I was going to be really sore. When I finished my skin was coated with a salty-sweat powder. I was reading that this is a sign that you're dehydrating quickly and not drinking enough water. I saw one guy at around mile 5 start to walk. He seemed to be in better shape than me and I yelled "Hey! No walking! Come on, let's go!". Someone had done this for me in the NYC Biathlon and I really appreciated it. He started running again and it actually made me move a little faster. I guess I felt like if I'm gonna tell some dude to keep moving, that I should at least lead the way. That felt pretty good.
During the last 2 miles, I was running alongside a 70 year old guy. On the flat parts he would pull ahead of me and then on the hills, he would fall behind me. Every time I caught up to him, I'd say "You again?!". He thought that was funny. The last 1/4 mile of the run was at the top of the hill. He said something like, "You're gonna pull ahead of me on that hill - it's all yours." I kicked it up a notch and charged up the hill. I saw Dave waiting on the side about 300 feet in front of the finish line. He yelled something at me and I tried to kick it up another notch.
In total I ran something like 7.96 miles. I still can't believe it. That's the furthest I've ever run. After the race, I was feeling great. I tried to hydrate and take it easy, but eventually I started to feel nauseous.
Later, I wanted to puke as Audrey showed us around in a driving tour of Arlington, so we stopped at a really cool coffeehouse called Murky Coffee. Noah got a muffin while I tried to stabilize my stomach and read the rants that liberal-minded Arlingtonians had written on the bathroom wall. The stuff written on the walls was amazing - some could have been editorial pieces in the New York Times. There were lots of powerbooks in the place which also made me feel at home. We wrapped things up there and headed back to Audrey and Dave's place for a huge BBQ dinner with Sheila and Brice. Good times.
My time for this unofficial 12.81K was 79:05. My average pace was roughly 9:56. The fact that I was able to finish is just incredible to me and then to have a sub-10:00 pace is just very gratifying.
Rotary Resolution 10K Adventure - Bib # 272
Leesburg, VA
January 1, 2006
Overall Place: 355/471
Age Place: 17/23
Gender Place: 258/318
Pace: 9:56
Complete Results
...and I'm Just Getting Started.
posted by Jon at
11:51 PM
1 Comments:
Jon--Ireally am impressed with what you have accomplished, and you are running a such a good pace. Since we never got to paly hockey together, maybe we can take a run, if I am in good enough shape these days to keep up.
Unc'l Allan
By
Anonymous, At
9:18 PM
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