I had a race this morning. It was put on by Life Skills, that is a huge mental health corp. The race was held on the hills of Western Kentucky Univ. Very hot humid day and hills, what more could you ask of a challenge. Well in my case it was a run race and I'm a walker, I guess I was looking for some humility training.

The race this morning was a 5 miler. It was hot, I was sweating just walking from the car to the race area, I think the humidity was close to 100%. I was of course walking and this was a run race so I had fears of being last. When we lined up at the start I was really concerned about that. Most of the competitors, about 100 or so were local running club members and WKU students since it was held on the campus hills and then thru town and back.

I hit mile on in 10:56 with one person running behind me. Then we hit the famous WKU hills, there football team is called the HillToppers. So the second mile split was 22:43, the course leveled out a little and I crossed the 3 mile mark at 33:52, mile 4 was 45:?? I couldn't hear the time good when it was called out. I crossed the finish at 56:57 for an average pace of 11:23 per mile with about 10 or so runners behind me. So I'm pleased with my race and time.

I didn't prepare for this race at all and had a hard workout yesterday instead of the normal rest day I would have before a race. But since it was a run race and spare of the moment anyway it didn't matter.

Doing a race like this that you can't possibly place in is fun sometimes because it takes the pressure off being competitive. My competition was not being last and anything after that was just icing on my racing cake. As it turned out I had a strong race anyway, it was very satisfying even if it was only to me. I normally don't race past 5K except once a year when I do the local 10K Classic, the most pleasing part of today was that if this was a 10K the pace would have been a PR for me.

Thanks for reading my race report.

Racing Panda