Yesterday was the Spring Grove Area Community Center Septemberfest 5K run/walk in Spring Grove. Woke up early, looked out the window, and saw that it was raining. Definitely wasn’t expecting that. Checked AccuWeather and saw that it was 77° with 100% humidity.
Heh… perfect racing weather.
Arrived at the Glatfelter Memorial Library at about 8:30 AM to pick up my registration packet and shirt. It was around then that I noticed a distinct lack of people. As it turns out, there were a total of 30 registered runners… but at least it had stopped raining.
We lined up at the starting line and started running on a “GO” from organizers, about three minutes before the planned start time of 9 AM. Honestly, I barely heard the guy and was basically facing the wrong way and talking to someone next to me. Slightly surprised, I took off at 6:02/mi… slowing down and regaining my composure after about 250 yards.
Then the first climb of the race started… followed by two more. I had been warned about the hills, and the warnings were correct. Almost the entire second mile was uphill, climbing over 150 feet. Thankfully the third mile was almost all downhill.
Finished in 26:05 official time (8:24/mi pace), placing 13 out of 30 runners… and top in my age group. That’s a PR, beating my previous official PR by 43 seconds.
According to my Garmin, the course was a little short at 3.03 miles and I ran it in 26:06 (8:36/mi) with an average speed of 7.0 mph and a max of 9.8 mph. My 1-mile splits were 8:03, 9:11 (hills!), and 8:39/mi. Ran the last tenth at a 6:42/mi pace. Burned about 450 calories.
As always, I hung around after I finished to watch and cheer for other finishers and see my tag get put up on the board. I was disappointed to see that the timer guy started taking down the finish clock somewhere around 35-36 minutes, and I think they shut it off at 38 with about 5 more people to go. For something billed as a run/walk, with only 30 people total it would have been nice to let them finish with a clock.
Overall the whole event felt a bit disorganized and (in my opinion) they shut the clock off early. I don’t think I’ll be running this one again next year… but I’m still happy to have finished with a PR.
Decent run.
I think that’s terrible that they shut off the clock that early in such a small race.
Shutting off the clock when there are people still on the course (unless there is an advertised cut-off time) is just lame.
Congrats on your race, pretty decent effort considering the heat/humidity combo. You will probably see a nice improvement if your next race has conditions more conducive to running.
Hey Bill, thanks for the encouragement. I have another race this coming weekend (Sunday), so we’ll see how I do. :)
And yeah, totally lame on pulling the clock.