Run for Reina 5K - Race Report

11 April, 2009

Panama City Beach, FL.

The Spartan Clan found themselves on a 3 day break in Panama City Beach, FL over the Easter weekend. In planning the trip, I looked up local races in along the Florida Gulf Coast and found on right near the beach in a new section of town called Pier Park. Since I would be running on Saturday morning anyway, I got approval from Household-6 to make it happen.

The organizers at Freedom Sports were located across the street from the Navy supply base I was staying at, so I went on Friday and met the race director, got my packet and talked briefly to gather some good info on the course. Everyone there at the store and packet pick-up was very friendly. The races big prizes were limited to the overall male and female finisher (Pearl Izumi's) as it was a race to help pay for the care of a 10 year old who had been badly burned in a January house fire.

I woke up and started my pre-race rituals. I had decided on the Bright Orange Disney Running shirt and my marathon Mizuno's for this race. I left early and got to the Pier Park area about an hour before start. Again, event staff was friendly and directed me to a few good places to park. I started reconnoitering the route and getting a few pictures at a slow warm-up pace. The crew was setting up the cones and pink chalk marks. It really helped me to see where a few turns were at and pre-plan them as the course ran through the shopping area streets and parking lots, basically making a lazy figure 8 with a traffic circle near the start as the center point. Elevation gain on this course would be about 10 feet on each lap!

The course would be 2 laps around the figure 8. I started warm-up stretches and talked with a few others as we got prepared to move to the start. A few others were like me in that they were coming down here on a weekend vacation and they just happened to get info about the race so they decided to come on out as they would be running on Saturday anyway.

Another heart warming aspect of this race was that a couple of school age groups of girls were here to run the race in support of their classmate. They were all in light purple and had been working together for a while to be able to make the run.

This was the first time (except for an Army 2 mile PT test) I have ever lined up on the front row. Standing next to me was one guy who not only looked fast, and had the orange racing flats to boot. Right behind me were two High School track team members and behind orange racing flats(ORF) was a guy with lime-green racing flats(GRF) and a few other guys I had been chating with. Then the little purple girls started to fill in the spaces. Their leader had told them to not line up at the start, but it was so cool seeing them to each side of me. After some announcements from the RD, we were given the "get ready..."

The air horn sounded. I shot out and cleared the girls in about 3 strides and it was ORF dude and I for the first 100 meters. Then the two track studs passed me and I drafted one of them for a short bit. (I now realize that I counted these two as one person Saturday) We cleared the first quarter mile as GRF dude got past me. I was hauling pretty quickly and started to think about settling into some type of groove. On the way back to the center of the figure eight for the first time, a Navy dive instructor got beside me. We would be close to each other for a long time, but each small surge, he was able to keep slightly ahead of me.

I would not allow anyone else to pass me as I started to find my zone. As I would look back and see anyone coming near me, I would kick it up slightly. That in turn would cause Navy guy to kick it up a bit. On the second lap we started to run into some traffic of the slower joggers and walkers, but most of them would clear out of the way when they heard me say "left side" or what ever.

One race volunteer had a cow bell and I gave her the "more cow bell" shout as I went by. The RD got on the mike as I went by saying he couldn't believe how bright my orange shirt was. I got pumped and kept steaming ahead. It was cool that the course took you through the unique shopping streets, and it will be really neat if they do more races here as the rest of the land gets developed. There were a lot of turns, but most of them were not hard 90 degree angles. That's where the warm-up/recon runs had helped.

I don't have my Gamin "watch" yet, so I don't know my splits, but I was rolling. For the final push I went into high gear to try and take down Navy diver dude. He was also starting his push and finished about 100 meters ahead of me. I looked up as I came to the finish and the salt got in my eyes. I had thought I'd read 17:4x, but it was 17:58. I came in 6th overall out of about 320 runners. I immediately had doubts about the course. Naturally, I had to find out.

I talked with the RD and the course was run in October of last year, so it was all worked out and that they got the course right!

So ... Wow. I'm floored as now I don't know what to do to improve. Guess I need to work on the 10K next week if I can find my legs!