Thursday, May 19, 2016

Slow & Steady 2016 - Race #9
CDPHP Workforce Challenge 3.5mi road race
Thursday, May 19, 2016

Well, if nothing else I proved tonight that aggravation can make me run faster.

The crowd on Madison Ave in front of the NYS museum was incredible, but I guess packing 9000+ people in that space will do that. I picked a spot about what I thought was halfway down the group - I figured that would put me with the slower runners but ahead of most of the walkers. Looked like I was about a tenth of a mile from the start.

A few minutes before race time, the chair of CDPHP  and the mayor of Albany both spoke, and then someone sang the national anthem, and then - it was time to start.

And we slowly walked toward the starting line. It took me five minutes to reach it, walking the entire way.

I figured after that people would start to run, but nope... a few people tried to run by on the sidewalk, but everyone was walking, walking, walking. I picked up my pace and started running where I could, weaving in and out, but the crowd was mostly walkers for the 1st mile, and a lot of walkers for the 2nd mile too... at least at that point things were thinning out slightly, so I could run consistently, with a lot of moving back and forth to find openings.

According to my Garmin, it took me 18 minutes to do the 1st mile, 11 1/2 minutes for the 2nd, 11 1/4 for the 3rd, and I was running a 10:30 pace for the last half mile (admittedly, all downhill.) The good news is my knees behaved the whole time (we'll see what they say tomorrow...) despite the fact that I'd planned to run 13-14 min miles.

I don't know if the problem was that I badly misjudged where to start or too many walkers decided that they should start closer to the front - regardless, it made for a very aggravating race. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to have pace groups - people holding up signs indicating where the 10 min milers should line up and so on, and especially a "walkers behind here" area. But it looks like a big chunk of the people who do this thing are walkers (maybe as much as 50%) so maybe they don't want to offend them. To me, it just seems important to have that many people better organized.

I will most likely do this again if we have a school team in the future - but I'll be starting a lot closer to the front if I do.

JMH

2016 Event Totals
Run 83.7 mi, 21 hr 3 min
Bike 21.5 mi, 1 hr 40 min
Snowshoe 6.2 mi, 1 hr 39 min
Kayak 0 mi, 0 min

states visited: CT, MA, NY, RI
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