$25 workout

Wow! My second race mishap of 2010. After barely making the start of the Meteor 10K, today I actually did miss the start of the Ambulance Chase 5K, but thankfully due to chip timing I was able to run the race, starting about 5:00 after everyone else and passing a sea of walkers and runners, finishing in a respectable chip time of 17:53 for first in my age group. Not the race I wanted to run, but if nothing else a good, albeit expensive Vo2 max workout. Here's what happened. Before I set off to due my warm up, I gave my wife my bag, which had my racing flats with chip attached to one shoe and my singlet with my race number. She, for some reason, thought I was wearing them already. I told her that I would meet her at the starting line, but since she thought I had everything I needed she was further down on the course in a spot to cheer me on. It was cloudy so I wasn't wearing my prescription shades, so my eye sight wasn't the best. When the race started and she saw I wasn't there, she ran to the starting line where I grabbed my flats, threw on my singlet and set off in mad pursuit. I didn't time it so the splits made no sense and I didn't realize they were running a different course. At one spot early on when I was just passing walkers I thought I was supposed to turn right, but everyone was going straight. I stopped for about 5 or 10 seconds and asked one of the walkers if this was the 5K run and she said she thought so, so I started running again! All and all, this was a good effort. I think if I had been in the actual race, I could have run maybe 30 seconds faster today (a friend who usually beats me by about 30 seconds was 16:59 today). I feel like I definitely started out a little too hard as if I were behind on a 4 x mile relay leg or something and I was trying to chase everyone down. Not sure what's next but I may jump into another 5K road race next Sunday in Rocky River instead of doing the XC race in Oberlin. I'd like a good road 5K benchmark one month away from Diemer. I'll chalk today down to Mercury Retrograde.