Hat on Top, Coat Below
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Inside the Numbers
December 11, 2006
The race results are up online from the 5K I did on Saturday. Hoo boy, there’s a lot to be discouraged about there if I choose to see it that way. The top female finisher took only 17 minutes and 37 seconds, a 5:40 pace. Five forty! I can’t even imagine. I doubt I ever ran that fast or ever will. But I can make myself feel better about that by saying “well, she’s fourteen years younger than I am, of course she’s a lot faster”. Except then I look at the top female in the masters category (for us not so young anymore types); she came in at 25:16, an 8:08 pace—and she’s two years older than I am. So much for that excuse. As in my other races, I ended up near the bottom of my age group, 13th of 15 in this case. I’m a few months from being in the next age group, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to help much, since my time would have put me 14th of 18 there. Also, once again I got smoked by the 8, 9, and 10 year olds—all but one of them was faster than I was. Those kids are tough.
It’s not all bad news, though. Comparing these results to the ones from my first race, I’m encouraged to see that I’m not the only one in my age group who had a slower pace over the longer distance. In fact, of the 40-44 females who did both races, I slowed down the least. Go me. Post-race on Saturday, I met a woman in the 65-69 group who gave me hope—she finished 2nd in her group and told me all I have to do is hang on, because by her age most people are dead or in Florida. Hah. The sad thing? My time Saturday would have put me at the very bottom of her group—I run slower than women in their late 60s. Though I did notice there were no women in the 70-74 or 75-99 age groups, so I guess I just need to hang on until then. I hope my knees and hips are up to it.
One final note: the top finisher among males 45-49 was Rip Cordless. I suspect that is not his real name.
