MARIETTA, Ga. -- I signed up for this race right at the early deadline figuring it would be a great race to do, even though the distance is atypical for this area.
I convinced the gf to also run in it and so we headed toward there in the early morning, especially a very cool one. I was able to use my GPS navigation on my Palm Pre so finding it was pretty easy.
The course is pretty nice. It's a rolling hills course and one that's pretty much to my advantage as a strong hill runner. But of course that's not all you have to worry about during a race.
In the first mile my left shoelace came undone. I waited until after the first mile marker to tie it. At the time I was running pretty much with the gf but when I stopped to tie it I waved her on to continue.
I thought that I would use a little extra energy in the second mile to catch up with her (I went from an average of 9:23 in the slow first mile to 7:47 in the second) but it was pretty impossible. So I just concentrated on trying to finish well.
My stomach felt a little queasy during the race so I also had to contend with that. Near the end of the race I took off the windbreaker I wore at the beginning of the run (it was pretty cold) and tied it around my waist.
But at Mile 4, there was a dude with a true miler's kick and he turned it on. Another dude ran with him at the outset but faltered and I ran him down. The miler's kick guy ended up with a very nice pace to follow, although he probably was about 10 seconds ahead of me at the very end.
I had a nice kick at the end and finished strong. I was probably about a minute behind the gf.
I am pretty happy about my race paces now. I now have about an 8 minute mile pace to fall back on and pretty consistently run under 8 in recent races.
It was a really fun race and worth doing. Would be nice to do again next year. Nice Asics CFLST also for in-store registrants.
Time: 7:30 a.m.
Temp: 44 degrees (?)
Gear: Nike windbreaker, LST (Jingle Bell Run), shorts, Nike Air Pegasus/A4.
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