On Thanksgiving morning, I started by being thankful that Golden Gate Park is home to so many road races, including the 2006 Run for the Hungry. I entered both the mile, run at 8am, and the 5K, run 30 minutes later. I am running the Academy of Sciences race later this morning, again doing the 5K distance, but I felt compelled to enter the Thanksgiving Day races because tucking into a lot of food later in the day feels more acceptable somehow after racing and because this race is the next in the series I ran in earlier this year.
I finished 3rd in the mile, running a 5:31 (official results), which was at the slow end of my expectations, but so be it. Average of 1:22 per quarter-mile, with splits like this: 1:19, 1:20, 1:27, 1:23. To be fair, the only uphill grade was in the third quarter-mile. There were fewer than 100 people in this one, and many were walking. 30-39 age group is a challenge; I was third in the age group as well as the race.
The 5K had many more people racing, although it’s still a small race overall. With a bit less than a mile to go, I found myself even with the guy who finished just ahead of me in the mile… once again, he had more left than I did. 19:22 overall. 6:04 for the first mile, 6:26 for the second mile, and 6:50 for the final 1.1 miles (no 3 mile marker; it’s about 6:12 pace). There was a fast posse way out in front in the 5K, so I really ran my own race — neither passing nor being passed after the first mile. I finished 13th overall, 7th in the age group.
Off to warm up!