Last Friday was the 4th of July. Since I have lived in Steilacoom, I have tried to run in the "4 on the 4th" whenever I can. It is hard to NOT run this race, because I can almost roll down the hill from my house to get to the start. It is a little race with a very honest (read: somewhat hilly) course. There are only two hills, and the 1st uphill is small, so of little consequence. The second hill, though, gets your attention. The course is an out-and-back, so you start off flying down the hill for the first 1/2 mile. Of course, what goes down must come back up in an out-and-back, so the last 1/2 mile of the race is a good attention-getter. I first ran this race back in, I think, around 2000 or 2001 (when I was much younger, fitter and faster). My time was somewhere in the 22 minute range and I was in the top 10. And every time I have run this race, I have gotten slower (and, naturally, older).
This year, I was not expecting to run very fast. I'm not very fit and I have not done any speedwork. So, I was wearing a T-shirt rather than a singlet and not my lightest flats. As I jogged down to the start, I thought, "Well, at least my legs weren't feeling dead." I paid my entry fee and waited for the start. In keeping with the feeling that I wasn't going to be running very fast, I only did a single stride-out (and even that wasn't very fast). We lined up and I made sure not to be up front. The starter (I think it was Pat Kenworthy) yelled, "Go!" and off we went. I held back going down the hill and cruised through the first mile in 6:23. The first mile marker was pretty accurate to my GPS. As we wended our way along Chambers Creek Road, and crossed the bridge, my GPS hit 2 miles. We headed up the first hill and turned around, and I thought, "We're way over 2 miles. How hard is it to get an accurate course on an out-and-back?"
I got chicked by Jenny Stevick shortly after the 3rd mile. We ran together for a bit, and chatted about how the last hill was a pretty miserable hill. And then she dropped me. I gathered myself for the last hill and as I started ascending, my GPS hit 4 miles. I thought about stopping for just an instant since it was 4 miles, but decided that I really should finish. As I went by one of the last bushes, somebody came out of it and started running towards the finish just in front of me. That seemed a bit strange to me, and as I passed him just before the finish, I wondered, "Would someone actually cheat in a little race like this?" Seemed strange that he would pop out just before the finish: if he was in front of me, why was he running slower at the finish than I was? Oh well, to each his own.
I finished in 27:19, which, according to my GPS was 6:33/mile, nearly 1 minute/mile slower than 2000. Funny thing is that my overall place is the same as last year, but I actually podiumed for my age group. The course was definitely longer than it has ever been, so my overall time looks worse than it should, but getting older clearly has its disadvantages. I guess it's time to get serious, so that I can try to recover lost youth!
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