For real I run like a turtle with a snail on my heels…. but I’m still breaking a sweat and I’m still feeling good. I know I will never be like one of those elite Kenyan runners… with their long lean legs and sub 5 minute miles… I will train hard to obtain a sub 10 minute mile and any break from running will push me to 12 minute miles… so what??? I’m still running and most importantly I’m still having fun…
Despite my (lack of)speed I have never had the honor of being the last one across the finish.. I have however been close to last to finish only to find the keg is warm (or empty) the size t shirt I requested is no longer available, and the food is cold. It can be irritating… so what if I’m not super fast? I still paid my registration fee just like everyone else…. Though it has never happened to me I have heard horror stories from my fellow turtle trotters… volunteers were taking down the finish line as they crossed the finish… that has to be the worst way to finish regardless of place…. First or last you still did it and deserve to have someone to call out your name, cheer you on and at the VERY least have a finish line to cross….
I recently got to experience on of the best races ever in my year of race running… AND I was last…
In late December I signed up for the Ft Huachuca Ice Breaker 10k…. I looked forward to having a race in my town of residence… normally the races are in Tucson, and they involved 430am wake ups and an hour plus of driving to get to your destination… a local race that started at 8 meant I could sleep until 615!
Anyways I show up to the race, meet my running buddy and we proceed to pump each other up… we both had been on a running hiatus since our December half marathon… but Jen has a pretty hardcore personality.. even if it killed her she would run her ass off and do a good job… it was me I was worried about.. if I feel pain or tightness in my legs (which I had for the past 2 weeks) I take it down a couple notches.. I don’t push through the pain and do what I know I can do I just slow it down and take my time… I think it’s because of being in the army and the mindset that pain is good.. and no matter how much pain you are in you keep giving it 200 percent.. now that I’m not in the army I guess I overly defy those “running rules” I know I do it and I know its mental.. but hey I’m doing this for fun! If I injure myself and take time off it will hinder my weight loss and that is just wrong!!
The starting horn goes off.. and away we go.. slowly and steady… I think it was the first time I didn’t shoot out at a unmanageable pace…I have a well mentioned history of starting way to fast… of course in the very first 100 meters there was a short but steep hill…after we get to the top and level off jen reads off the pace on her garmin: 10:45 minute mile if we can keep this up we are good! I of course say OK! Because normally a 10:45 is a VERY comfortable pace for me… of course as we go on my legs get that familiar led feeling… I try to keep up and push on… we talked about the route.. it went through AIT land… and took us on the pt route that we ran many years ago as young privates sent here right from basic training, to get our specialized training… of course this route was actually on a gradual uphill… so needless to say it was tons of fun…
As we go out past the training halls we make a turn on to a back road, we keep chugging along until HOLY CRAPOLA there was a giant hill in front of us… Heritage hill to be exact… you looked up and all you could see was road.. like someone went underneath the earth and stuck a giant pole underneath..so I did the only thing you can do when faced with a monsters hill… dig in put your head down and keep chugging…. So I had my head down and I’m chugging and I get passed by a couple more people but the middle of a giant hill is no time to try to one up someone… you just do what you have to do to get to the top… well that’s my philosophy anyway ;) I get halfway up the hill and some comedian had written OUCH in giant letters with marking chalk… which would have been irritating if I wasn’t so delirious from the lack of oxygen in my brain from the increasing elevation…. Instead I started laughing hysterically… once I get to the top there is a water station SWEET and my best running buddy ever… she is much better at climbing hills then me.. mainly because she has more heart and dedication…. I told her she didn’t need to wait for my slow ass but she is a good friend and would never leave me (unless there was a lady with a crazy blond and black peacock haircut that she couldn’t bear to look at anymore) and that’s what’s great about her… besides it helps you push harder when you have someone faster ;)
After I use the downhill after the brutal hill to recover we come around a bend… she reads off our time: 13:25 minute mile… me: damn that is slow!!! So jen being the hardcore person she is says see that girl in the pink shirt?? We can totally catch her… ok? I said ok not because I really felt like I could push harder but mainly because after we had climbed the hill I had looked back and realized I was the last runner in the race and didn’t want to lag too far behind… so I gulped some water from my hand held bottle and picked up the pace a bit… as the gap closed in she read of our new pace which was 11 something… she told me that we could totally get our pace under 10 minutes for the rest of the race… I mumbled something like um ok and lengthened out my stride as we hit the 4 mile cone she said we were at a 9 something pace and we could just hold that until the end… I agreed.. I mean it didn’t feel too bad and we were closing in the gap on the girl with the pink sweat shirt,, and the girl in purple and yellow that I had been close with on the hill… we kept our mindless banter up until we reached the next water station at about mile 5.5…. I had to slow myself down to get some water… hey have you ever tried drinking water from a cup while running??? There is an art to it… one that I have not mastered so unless I have intentions on drowning myself while drinking and running I have to slow it down… that was a big mistake… once I had worked myself up to the faster pace I think momentum was keeping me going… once I slowed down it was hard to pick it back up… it helped when she read off that our time had dropped down to over 13 minutes again… as I tried pushing myself to run harder the NCO in jen came out… come on cass you can do this..I know you can! Let’s do this!! So I say ok.. because the way she said it,,, it sounded so true, so convincing, like oh yeah I totally got this sh!t down!! We keep going faster until we get to the end of the pt road and there were two people with numbers standing there cheering the people in front of us on… since we knew we were the last ones (courtesy of one of the water vans driving on our a$$ the last few miles) Jen turned her head to the female and said hey so are you guys here to motivate us to the end? The lady replied oh well yeah we are! And her and her male battle buddy picked up cadence alongside us… as we rounded the corner by the chow hall a unmarked MP car pulled alongside of us and said “you guys get the VIP treatment today!” turns out it was the two runners LT.. Since it wasn’t a closed course of course they had MP’s around to make sure there were no issues.. but once again.. since I was last.. that meant I get one right behind me… but instead he pulled in front of us to make sure the path was clear… Jen asked the female what her time was.. the lady said they didn’t time yet… that they crossed the finish line with the slowest runners…. What??? You mean a race that actually goes around and motivates the “slow” runners and helps them to the finish??
Given the fact it’s the Army it shouldn’t have surprised me.. even in formation runs if someone falls out a road guard or someone else from the squad usually falls back with them just to make sure they are ok and to keep motivating them to catch up… (I think really to make sure they actually finish the run and not retreat back to the barracks for a pre work call nap) Either way with the Army mentality you have a battle buddy for everything and you never left behind to parish…
After I use the downhill after the brutal hill to recover we come around a bend… she reads off our time: 13:25 minute mile… me: damn that is slow!!! So jen being the hardcore person she is says see that girl in the pink shirt?? We can totally catch her… ok? I said ok not because I really felt like I could push harder but mainly because after we had climbed the hill I had looked back and realized I was the last runner in the race and didn’t want to lag too far behind… so I gulped some water from my hand held bottle and picked up the pace a bit… as the gap closed in she read of our new pace which was 11 something… she told me that we could totally get our pace under 10 minutes for the rest of the race… I mumbled something like um ok and lengthened out my stride as we hit the 4 mile cone she said we were at a 9 something pace and we could just hold that until the end… I agreed.. I mean it didn’t feel too bad and we were closing in the gap on the girl with the pink sweat shirt,, and the girl in purple and yellow that I had been close with on the hill… we kept our mindless banter up until we reached the next water station at about mile 5.5…. I had to slow myself down to get some water… hey have you ever tried drinking water from a cup while running??? There is an art to it… one that I have not mastered so unless I have intentions on drowning myself while drinking and running I have to slow it down… that was a big mistake… once I had worked myself up to the faster pace I think momentum was keeping me going… once I slowed down it was hard to pick it back up… it helped when she read off that our time had dropped down to over 13 minutes again… as I tried pushing myself to run harder the NCO in jen came out… come on cass you can do this..I know you can! Let’s do this!! So I say ok.. because the way she said it,,, it sounded so true, so convincing, like oh yeah I totally got this sh!t down!! We keep going faster until we get to the end of the pt road and there were two people with numbers standing there cheering the people in front of us on… since we knew we were the last ones (courtesy of one of the water vans driving on our a$$ the last few miles) Jen turned her head to the female and said hey so are you guys here to motivate us to the end? The lady replied oh well yeah we are! And her and her male battle buddy picked up cadence alongside us… as we rounded the corner by the chow hall a unmarked MP car pulled alongside of us and said “you guys get the VIP treatment today!” turns out it was the two runners LT.. Since it wasn’t a closed course of course they had MP’s around to make sure there were no issues.. but once again.. since I was last.. that meant I get one right behind me… but instead he pulled in front of us to make sure the path was clear… Jen asked the female what her time was.. the lady said they didn’t time yet… that they crossed the finish line with the slowest runners…. What??? You mean a race that actually goes around and motivates the “slow” runners and helps them to the finish??
Given the fact it’s the Army it shouldn’t have surprised me.. even in formation runs if someone falls out a road guard or someone else from the squad usually falls back with them just to make sure they are ok and to keep motivating them to catch up… (I think really to make sure they actually finish the run and not retreat back to the barracks for a pre work call nap) Either way with the Army mentality you have a battle buddy for everything and you never left behind to parish…
As we hit the 6 mile mark we have managed to get our pace up to a under a 8 mile pace… we had turned on to the last stretch of open road and the mp turned his lights and sirens on full boar... the two army soldiers and Jen started cheering and getting real pumped up… I was pumped up too but was too tired to show my excitement.. I do think I had a silly smile on my face because I was amused at how pumped up these MP’s were… they were acting like we were about to win this race and set a world record when really they were all just bringing up the rear….maybe its an MP thing because if I ever fell our or lagged behind a run when I was active duty I defiantly don’t remember getting any sort of encouragement whatsoever..in fact it was quite the opposite… they actually would degrade you and try to make you feel like crap for being slow… thinking that would make you faster… haha not quite…
So anyways there we were flashing lights… sirens.. then as we make the turn to go off the road and down the big hill we had climbed up 6.2 miles ago a platoon of soldiers spot their 1SG (the male solider running w us) and starts racing up the hill toward us… they were yelling their encouragement “come on” “nice job” “almost to the finish” etc… of course the fact it was a extreme downhill I was able to let momentum and gravity carry me down at nearly triple the speed I was going before… this caused the mob of soldiers running amongst me to yell “yeah get some!” “yeah get it, almost there” etc you get the picture…
So no sh!t there I were… racing toward the finish line as fast as I could..huge mob of soldiers around me yelling and motivating me to the finish.. like I was a celebrity… like I was setting the world record in a 10k…or more like we were finishing with a new 10k race PR time with 1:21… our first 10k race time was 1:28… of course Jen could have run it a lot faster she was just helping her pokey buddy along ;)
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