Tour de Cure 5K 10/14/17
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| At the start |
Tour de Cure has been early summer event, but this year,
they moved to October. It is one of my
first rides and it has been the biggest fund raising event for me. This year, I hoped it to be my come back
T-shirt ride (I rode with PBA on Labor Day), but Tony learned it was going to
be his working weekend. The event had
also a new location and had an option for 5K run/walk. So I
made a switch so that I can get done early.
THANK YOU, David Haddock, Brad Ellis, Marianne Rogers, Mike Ferreti,
Irene Berry, Judy King, Jon Davis, Stephanie Pianka, Shona Donovan and Robin
Markowski for your donation!
I am usually terrified with run events. They are usually bigger than cycling events
and it is a struggle to find a decent parking, lines for porta potty is
depressingly long and I don’t do well with huge crowd. I was imagining this usual and arrived the
event almost two hours before the start time.
I picked up my number, T-shirt and grabbed some food for later, I went
back to the car to sit down. Sitting in
the car was already too hot. Luckily
opening the hatchback created some shade and I sat there for a while. Jeff Kilarski, previous Team Red captain, was
on SAG duty and spotted me on the parking lot.
He said the ride course was the same as other ride I did before and
there were quite a few people needed to be rescued. Texas famous chip seal was being blamed. I went to the start line to see off some
riders, I spotted a sole cyclist who was taking a photo of the start
shoot. So I said, I will take your photo
if you take mine. I am sporting a button
saying, “I ride for Antonio.” Well, it
is not Tony, but that is close enough.
As an hour before the start approached, I heard in loud speakers that
walkers and runners should gather. DJ
and a guy were doing fun warm up. It
ended up pretty hard and I thought I wouldn’t need the usual one-mile warm up. It was quite fun dancing to the music!
3 mile riders, runners and walker were starting almost at
the same time. I started the run and
with all that adrenaline and people around me and soon realized I am doing
12:00 min./mi. or even close to 10:00.
That is the best pace EVER and back then I did a lot of running. I figured this is not likely going to last
very long. But people around me were
going fast. I started to wonder, all
these people could not possibly keep this pace.
My plan was to walk for 0.02 miles every 0.5 miles. But the watch doesn’t let me set the alarm
not according to the distance, but time.
I estimated 13:00 min./mi, so I set it every 6:30 to walk 30 sec., but
that calculation is out of the window. Sure
enough, little by little, people were not catching up to me after my walk
breaks and I started to run just behind this lady with pink top.
I saw a church and the tent with lots of people at around
1.49 miles in. There was also a road
closed sign blocking and sort of said to the lady, “I guess this is the turn
around?”, so we both turned around.
After we did, a lady came and said doing the loop, so if there was a
timing mat in front of the church, I didn’t hit it and I would be DQ! The schedule was 3-mile ride was starting at
9:30, 30 minutes earlier than walk/run and I wished they stick with that. 10-mile riders were coming back with the same
route in opposite directions (longer ones were in the other direction protected
by heavy officer presence) and it was hectic.
I didn’t see any accidents and often runners and riders were small
children and some people looked like they don’t have lot of experience
riding.
I guestimated walk breaks and passed the lady in pink and
never saw her again. The street was ever
so slightly up hill and it was also getting warm. Normally if I had choice, I don’t run outside
unless the temperature is about 70 degrees.
I poured a little water over head and waited the finish shoot to appear
eagerly. There was a cheering crew at
the finish line. I thanked the police
and volunteers as often as I get to and quickly reached the parking lot to hop
on the car. It is Ironman World
Championship day and I could still catch the start.
After looking at the run watch stats, it was in fact too
short for 5K and my pace was 12:00 min./mi average. That is way faster than I planned. I am glad that I got this one out of the
way. I have two more weeks to prepare
breast cancer run on the 28th.
This time, Tony will be with me and it should be cooler. I may add photos and stats later, but for
now, I just have the link to Garmin stats.
Garmin data