Time to wrap a bow on one of my goals for 2012. 5x5K is officially complete with the finish of The Color Run – Des Moines.
It was a bit chilly for the run but it was a blast. No times, just 27,000 of your friends running a 5K and getting colored power thrown on them. Quite the experience and I recommend it to just about everyone. Walkers, runners, kids. All are welcome!
Well, the 4th 5K is in the books and I’m quite pleased with the result. Last year I had seen the Ankeny Sunset Run 5K but due to a scheduling conflict, I just couldn’t make it work. This year however, no conflicts and the race was on one of the free weekends I have in August.
The official count of participants was 49 so by no means is this thing a large race. And I think that it is mainly due to a lack of advertising and information on the race. As an example, it was hard to find the route information on the city of Ankeny web site. I had to go off a brochure that was a couple of years old. It was the same as before, but still, left a feeling that this wasn’t the most organized of events.
Continuing on with my running goal knocked down run #3 of the year with the Warrior Dash – Iowa just outside of Earlam IA.
This was a race that several of my co-workers were going to run including my wife. Before the race started, the big boss (wife) and I agreed that we’d run this together. We’re out to enjoy the race and have some fun…race times be damned!
The race is basically a 3.43 mile trail run with 12 obstacles along the way. The day was hot as could be with some nice humidity and to add to it all, no breeze. Or, the worst weather for running you can imagine.
My 2nd 5K of the year is in the bag with the completion of the Dam to Dam 5K. The race this year took a different route and had a much better result for me. I’ve been running a lot more and it definitely showed.
At the end of the day, I got 8th in my age group and 100th overall with a time of 23:04. I tied the 7th place guy in my age group but he had 2 seconds on me in gun time. You’re going down next time Doug Grunst.
Today marked the official start to the race season for me. I’m not competitive in these things by any means but calling it a race season makes it seem like I know what I’m doing. Signup, run, don’t die. Pretty much in that order. In the end, its all about knocking out one of my goals for 2012.
There were a lot of things different about the Red Flannel Run in 2012 compared to last year. First and foremost, the temps. Last year we were in the mid-30s and I was warm as could be in my gear. This year, I wore pretty much the same thing except the temps were 7 degrees with a -6 windchill. It was cold out there. But with the gear I had on and the running, I warmed up pretty quickly. I just wish I would have had some sort of neck gator on. That would have made a pretty big difference for me. I kept having some breathing issues after the first 1.5 miles and I’m pretty sure it was due to things (mouth, lungs etc) freezing up a bit.