Dead Runners society race report
Sacramento Millenium Midnight Run 5km - friday 31st December
1999/saturday 1st January 2000.
I finally left Montpellier on 15th December and returned to England
and Shelley (via Paris) on 16th December. 6 days later we were off on our
travels again, over the pond to sunny California to visit Shelley's family and
friends for the holidays. For the Millenium eve celebrations we were in
Sacramento where I was supposed to be racing 50km. However, this race was
cancelled due to to lack of interest so I ended up racing 5km instead as the
midnight hour struck. Here is the race report from our post about our
travels.
On Millenium Eve we met up with another DRS/Buffalo Chips friend, Cary Craig for the Sacramento Midnight 5km. Tony was hoping to run a 50km race this evening but they cancelled the race as they couldn't get enough entries, oh well, Tony really wasn't properly fit for a 50km anyway. Cary and Shelley planned to do the midnight run so Tony decided to do the run with the ladies. We arrived and entered the race, nice long sleeved t-shirt. We did about 1.5 miles to warm up before the race, it was very cold, just above freezing so we both ran in with long sleeved shirts under our club running vests and tights. There were some very strangely dressed runners at the race, with quite a few runners in fancy dress, perhaps the strangest looking runners were those racing just in running vest and shorts, there was even a woman in jogbra and shorts, brrrr. We lined up with Cary pretty close to the front up with the fast runners although worryingly there were some fancy dress runners and children up at the front as well. As midnight struck there were fireworks going off all over the city, the race course was very close to the Sacramento river and there were boats on the river sounding their horns as well, we weren't quite sure when the race was going to start.
Tony's race. Suddenly we all started moving and the year "2000" was lit up by fireworks, it was a chaotic start, I nearly tripped up after a couple of steps before I got going and started to weave my way through the crowd, I passed Cary fairly quickly, with a slightly downhill start the first half mile was at flat out blind panic pace before things settled down. I worked my way through for the first mile (6.37), by the turnaround I was feeling tired and losing a few places, on the way back I could see Cary fairly close behind having discarded her bag of sand :-) Before the race she was claiming that she was unfit and had done no speedwork in ages, Shelley was a bit further back. 2 miles in 13.12/6.35 and 3 miles in 19.56/6.44. Uphill to the end and I was getting a few places back, very hard to the end crossing the line in 20.37 (my watch). Very tired on finishing, a bit better time than I thought I would do although 19.xx would have been even better. Cary did about 21.20ish (winning an age group prize) and I will let Shelley tell her own race story.
Shelley's race. I didn't have a very good race. To start I fell, right at the beginning of the race. I tripped avoiding a kid who had fallen. I wasn't hurt apart from some scrapes, but it was kind of scary because there were so many people behind me trying to trample me to death. After that it took a while to get going and it very definitely put an end to running with Cary, which was probably just as well for her, since at the speed she went I would never have kept up. Earlier I had thought about trying to break 22 on this race, but with about a week before the race I did something to me rib coughing, which pretty much put an end to such hopes. It may have also had something to do with my fall, because I felt more unsure on my feet because of cautiousness about hurting it. During the day when the rib had been bothering me I had feared that I wouldn't have been capable of more than jogging the race, but once I got going after the fall the rib didn't bother me as much as I had feared. I probably started a bit too fast, since I managed pretty even splits of around 7:45 each mile including the time taken for the fall. In the end I sprinted to just barely break 24 with a time of 23:57, pretty close to a PW. But Cary cheered me up after I got back to England by telling me that I had in spite of all that, won my age group. I guess that means I am getting old. :-)
And speaking of getting prizes for getting old, I had another surprise a couple of days ago. I was sent a prize from a 5k series that I ran in Stevenage over a month ago for second in my age group. Tony says I'm going to have to get a trophy cabinet pretty soon. After we had all finished the three of us did another mile or so to cool down as the "notquitesoserious" competitors were still on the course. Then we went back to the car to get lots of warm clothes on and when we got back to the race finish the stragglers were STILL coming in. We waited for the presentation for a bit but it was just too cold so Cary came back to where we were staying after the race for a cup of tea and a chat. An interesting way to start the new year huh?
Shelley Walsh and Tony Bell
Milton
Cambridgshire England
Tiger@shells.demon.co.uk
Shelley Walsh Shelley@shells.demon.co.uk
http://www.shells.demon.co.uk/index.html
Tony
Bell Tony@shells.demon.co.uk
http://www.shells.demon.co.uk/tonyweb.html
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