Driving to
work from the lake to Ann Arbor, I sometimes pass through the small town of
Dexter, and there I noticed a banner saying “Dexter-Ann Arbor half marathon
June 3rd”. When I mentioned this to Jamie, who is a runner, he
showed me the website and started relating funny stories of past editions, so I
decided I would sign up for the 10 k (or quarter marathon, almost). I am not
competitive at all, but I do enjoy the buzz of a run with some thousand other
runners. The course
for the 10 k furthermore was along the scenic drive that I like to drive home,
which is nice and shady and pretty.
Another
motivation was that last year when I got back from my extended visits to the US
and Europe I didn’t fit in some of my pants anymore, which a steady diet of ice
cream will do for you even when you walk/run in a lab 12 hours a day. I really
regretted last year that I had not brought my running shoes, so this year I
want to make the most of them. And still eat the ice cream of course.
So last
Sunday was race-day. We started at 8 am in Ann Arbor. There were some 2000
people running the 10 k so at first it was all a bit crowded, but all in good spirits.
We ran down the busiest street of Ann Arbor and all that could be heard was the
“flap flap flap flap” of thousands of running shoes hitting the asphalt. It
felt great to be with so many like-minded people on an early Sunday morning,
all fit and craving the runner’s high … So like-minded that it didn’t surprise
me at all when after 5 minutes someone behind me complained to her partner “my
hips are killing me from that mountain bike ride yesterday!”. Seems I wasn’t
the only one to substitute running with mountain biking before race-day. At
least my hips were still doing fine.
I started a
bit too much at the front of the 2000 people line-up so that at first I was
being overtaken a lot, which was not quite so motivating, but I am not one who
is easily impressed or intimidated so I just kept my own pace. Because we turned
around after exactly 5 km, I could judge how many people were in front of me,
and how many behind, and it seemed I was pretty much in the middle, as
expected. It doesn’t sound very cool to say that I am pretty average, but that
was the case here.
I was
having a good time. The weather was great, not too warm, a nice breeze, and
most of the run was in the shade. We ran along the river through the forest and
could hear the birds. When we hit the 5 km my time was 30 minutes, which was
what I expected. My goal was to finish under 1 hour, but in the end I finished
in basically exactly 1 hour. Some time was subtracted from the timer on the
photo because my chip and me went through the start a bit later than time 0 and
came down to 1:00:09. The last kilometer I realized this was going to happen so
I started running faster (they took some really unflattering photos of this
too), but this is as good a time as any other…
Most
importantly I had a fun time, I earned another t-shirt, and I didn’t feel very
sore the next day. I am now looking for a half marathon to train for the coming
months.
