Today I ran the RSM Labor Day 5k. It was a last minute decision. Usually I pick races to enter months in advance, but this one I signed up just last week. This race was like my wife's pregnancy it was broken up into trimesters. The first trimester was the "race around the slowpokes" trimester. I ran my butt off zig-zagging around people that lined up near the front but then decided to go really slow. Then there were the people that wanted to chit-chat and they would run 5 wide and it was a son of gun to get around them. Once I passed the one mile mark I had finally overtaken the slowpokes and luckily I got a break; the next mile was down hill..Yah!
So it was the second trimester had begun. This one was the cougar trimester. Suddenly I was surrounded by buff 30-45 year old women. It seemed that every couple of seconds as I raced down the hill a cougar would pass me on one of my flanks. I was getting tired but I could not let this stand and I found myself sprinting every 20 -30 yards just to fend them off.
Once they had fallen back or smoked me, I entered the third trimester of the RSM Labor Day 5k. This trimester was all about avoiding little kids that had sprinted the first 2 miles only to run out of gas when the down hill of mile 2 was replaced by the uphill of mile 3. They would be in front of you and just stop. So the first trimester and the third were similar in that I spent all kinds of energy avoiding slowpokes and road hazards.
In the end I ran the whole thing unscathed, and enjoyed every second of it. Can't wait to do it next year with a stroller!
Some of Grant's First Steps
17 years ago
