I’m competing in two
events at the Minnesota Senior Games.
One is a road race (running) event and the other is a power walking
event. By competing in these two events
at this year’s Minnesota Senior Games, I can qualify for the road race and
power walk events at next year’s National Senior Games.
Next year’s National
Senior Games will be held in Tulsa, OK.
I don’t know what my schedule looks like for next year, so I don’t even
know if I’ll be going to Tulsa. I wanted
to qualify to keep my options open.
This year’s Minnesota
Senior Games are being held in Mankato.
I drove to Mankato yesterday, so I could do my athlete check-in. My first event was the 5K road race.
The National Senior Games
have events in more than 25 different sports.
In most sports, you need to qualify by placing in the top four in your
age group in any of the state Senior Games.
The road race events are an exception.
They can accommodate a large field, so you can qualify just by competing
in the state games.
There are two road race
events: 5K and 10K. By competing in
either of these events in Minnesota, I could qualify for both events in Tulsa.
The event schedule in
Mankato had both road race events taking place at the same time, so I had to
choose between the 5K and 10K. Making
matters worse, my power walking event is also today. I chose to do the 5K road race, because
running 10K would make it harder to recover in time for my power walking race.
The 5K race started at
7:30 AM at Sibley Park. This is the same
venue that was used for the 5K race four years ago, but the course was
different, because of road construction.
In particular, the race started and finished in a different part of the
park. After looking at a course map, I
decided to drive over there to make sure I knew where to park in the morning.
Athlete check-in started yesterday
at 5:00 PM. I made a point of getting
there right when it started, so I could have an early dinner. While I was there, I looked at the
registration lists for both of my events, so I would know how many people were
in my age group. As it turns out, there
was only one other person in my age group for the 5K road race.
I got to sleep early
enough, but I woke up at 1 AM, and I never got back to sleep. After four hours of resting in bed, I finally
got up.
The weather was unusually
cool for an August morning. The
temperature was in the upper 50s, and it didn’t warm up much by the time I
finished.
I could’ve stayed in my
comfort zone. I didn’t need a fast time
to qualify for Tulsa, and I was guaranteed to place in my age group, as medals
go to the top three. I chose to go
all-out anyway. It’s been a long time
since I ran a 5K race, and this was a good way to evaluate my current fitness
level.
There were only 36
runners, and some of them were doing the 10K race, which was two laps of the
same course. I knew there was one other
runner in my age group, but I didn’t know who it was. Mostly, I was racing the clock.
When we started running,
three runners took off much faster than everyone else. I was leading the next group. I quickly realized I was starting too fast,
so I had to ease up until my pace felt sustainable. As I did, five or six other runners passed
me.
After about a quarter
mile, we left the park and turned onto residential streets. By now, I had found my pace, and I was
following the runners ahead of me, trying not to fall any farther behind.
I hit the one-mile mark
in 7:55. That’s about what I was hoping
for. The question now was whether I
could sustain that pace for the rest of the race.
In the second mile, we
turned onto a paved trail that follows the river bluff. There were a couple of small hills. The first hill slowed me down, but I was
keeping pace with the runner ahead of me.
After the hill, I quickly got back up to my previous pace.
On the next hill, I also
slowed a little, but I started to gain ground on the runner ahead of me. After that hill, I passed him. Then I tried to keep pace with another runner
who was farther ahead. At this point, he
was the only runner I could still see.
My time for the second
mile was 8:12. That was a little
disappointing, but not surprising. I
knew those hills slowed me down.
As I began the third
mile, I reached a turnaround. Going out,
we were on the trail, but coming back, we were on the road. I could see that I would have to run up a
hill right after making the turn. I passed
the next runner as I started up that hill.
I fought hard to keep up
my pace on that hill, thinking it was the last hill on the course. When I reached the top, I saw that there was
still one more hill. That was
disheartening.
That last hill really
tested me. I fought up this one as well,
but I didn’t have much left in the tank.
As I got back onto residential streets to head back to the park, I was
struggling to keep up my pace.
I was almost to the park,
when I saw the leader of the 10K race going out on his second lap. After entering the park, I saw my time for
mile three. It was 8:07. I was pleased to see that it was a little
better than my second mile. I knew what
I had left. There was one more turn, so
I still couldn’t see the finish line. It
seemed like it was a lot more than a tenth of a mile.
I finished in 26:18. Officially, the course was 5 kilometers, but my
watch read 3.26 miles. I don't generally trust GPS measurements, but after talking to other
runners, the consensus was that the course was a little bit long. Going by the official distance, my average pace was 8:28. According to my watch, my average pace was 8:04. That's more encouraging.
I had to wait for
everyone else to finish before they did the awards ceremony. It was only then that I found out I won my
age group. For that, I got a gold medal.
My next race is the one-mile power-walking event this afternoon. It starts at 2 PM, so I need to recover quickly.
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