My First Race of the Year

This last weekend I participated in a small, local winter 5k cross country race. This race was held on a popular three loop course. There were runners of all ages. I was planning to run hard, but was not sure what type of pace I could handle after several months of not running at race pace. The course was soggy, which made footing difficult. I went through the 1k fairly quick and was in about 8th place. Realizing I couldn't handle that pace for long, I decided to back off the gas.

During the first loop I moved up to sixth, but felt any further effort wasn't going to be rewarded as the high schoolers went out very fast and were likely out of reach for my 43 year old legs. As we started to repeat the first loop we were to turn right, but I noticed the top 5 went left. I knew they weren't following the course in the right order, but I followed them anyway just in case the race director had told them to change the course. As we should have been starting our third small loop to make up the distance we cut, all five of the youngsters turned to go to the finish. This, despite the fact that they were still quite short of the 5k. I suddenly found myself in 1st place as I knew I had to make up the distance by running a third loop. Miraculously, my 43 year old legs felt half their age and I was able to hang on for the "win".

The moral of the story is even though you may feel like you are just going through the motions, pay attention, surprises still happen!