Elf Fun Run Fundraiser 5K - RR

Fort Benning, GA

15 May 2009

My latest race was another fundraiser event. This time for the Fort Benning Santa's Castle, an organization that helps provide toys for Soldier families. For me, I was getting particularly nervous about this race. I wanted to prove to myself that my last 5K was not a fluke. Something that had been eating me up some.

When my youngest cat jumped on my pillow about a half hour before my alarm was to go off, I was wide awake, and immediately started prep for the run. First stop, the Runner's World threads. I started tea and put down a banana while I skimmed the net. I got myself, my race bag and my Gatorade ready. I took a big cup of coffee and woke up my new training partner, Carmin (the Garmin) as I headed out the door.

I arrived to the area and began my warm-up run. Storms had brought a good amount of rain Friday night, so the gravel track at Stewart Field had become packed down and a few of the corners were slightly flooded. After completing one loop and seeing the exact area that they were setting up at, I stopped to get my bib number.

I ran into a buddy and we would talk off and on throughout the pre-race time. He was going through a bunch of military courses after going over to the Officer side of the Army. While attending a school offered in the same building where I instruct he had seen the flier for this event. It pays to advertise!

The race was set up with Christmas themed decorations and Christmas music was blaring on the loadspeaker. There was a cut out white tree, and all the workers had on bright "Elf" green shirts. The workers here were very cheerful!

The turn out was good despite the stormy skies looming overhead. With the amount of military units arriving from nearby billets, I estimated about 400 would be racing the 5K. I beat the majority of people arriving, and got in and out of pacet pick-up quickly. It was there that I talked briefly with the race director and found out that we would be doing only 1 mile on the track, and the other 2.11 miles on the streets. We would end up making a huge figure 8 around the area.

I "towed the line" at the front and traded stories with other guys. I got a couple of interrested remarks on the WDW DisneyRunning.com shirt and one guy told me he was looking at doing the martahon this January. The race director kept coming over and giving us the time left until the race began. As he announced "two minutes," a few more people started to push up on the line. I held my ground and got ready ... it was going to be tight at the begining.

The race director came over to the front and gave us 20 seconds. We got ready and the front line leaned over some. "Get Ready, Get Set," and the horn went off!

At three steps out there was a little "Rubbin's Racing" on my right side as we established position for the very first turn. By the second turn I knew that I had blazed out of the gates a bit too fast. I was going to keep pushing to maintain my position, which I estimated to be about 6th at this point. It was tough to keep doing the math on my position due to so many people wearing the white race shirt.

Around Stewart Field we went, and I had two others get passed me, but I kept one within close range. The humidity was making my breathing feel tight. The last few days we have had about 70-75% humidity, but today it was 100%. The lungs were fighting back. At one mile we were turning off the track and heading up towards the Airborne School jump towers. 1st Mile - 5:42

The next mile and a half was a slowing rising uphill. I could feel myself losing some steam, and I was in a back and forth battle with two Afican-American Soldiers. 2nd Mile - 6:09. The hill got steeper. At the top of the hill which was on a turn, I tried a 10 step surge. The second Soldier countered my move and was still right beside me. I tried to draft the first one in hopes of staying with them until the last sprint. They both had been in races before, as everytime I tried a surge, they kept with me. On the next straight away, they both got ahead of me and started their pushes.

Now it was just a struggle for me to stay in the fight. 3rd Mile - 6:33. Everyone started going for the finish and I held off the guy behind me. Finally I got into the chute and they collected up my bib slip. Being a smaller race set-up, there were no chips and timing was done by volunteers manually entering in the data. At the end of the chute, we recieved raffle tickets.

My best guess is that I was 9th overall. This race only had 3 divisions, top 3 male, female and 18 or under. (The top 18 and younger was the same girl who came in 8th overall during the Celebrity Classic 10K 4 weeks ago.) As far as the raffle, I was off by 2 numbers from winning a pair of $80 sunglasses from US Cavalry, a military and adventure store.

The post-race food consisted of Banana's, Orange's and Krispy Kream Donuts! Again, for a local, thrown together race, it was put together pretty well ... except for port-a-johns. :)

Lessons Learned: If you factor in the long rising hill, the humidity and the fact that my legs felt "wooden" from 1 mile on, then I guess this race does validate my performance from one month ago. Maybe.

Bottom line: 5K race in 19:11.