A little whine would be good right about now.

On July 14, the DCRRC held their annual Bastille Day 4 miler. Having run a disappointing 4 miler just 10 days prior, I was really hoping to run better in this evening race. I left my office in Tyson's Corner at about 5:45... a little late for a 7:00 start at Fletcher's Boathouse. Little did I know that my car wouldn't start when I got to the garage. Not good.



I ran back to the office and found a friend (Femi-mentioned in earlier blogs) leaving for the day. He said he would be happy to help jump my car if I had cables, which I did. The car turned over quickly. After quickly disconnecting the cables and saying my thanks to Femi, I was off! I knew I needed a light traffice night if I had any chance of covering the 15 miles in less than the remaining 45 minutes. Fortunately, it was one of those rare DC evenings where the road was open in front of me. I was held up on the Key Bridge for about 10 minutes but I still made it to the race with time to spare. Warning lights were on in the car during the drive so I decided to try to restart the car as soon as I parked. Sure enough, dead again. Well, I decided to deal with that after the race. My wife still questions my sanity on that decision as she said virtually everyone would have chosen to take care of their car then but I had a race to run!



It was a warm evening but not blistering hot like a few recent races.The first mile go up hill towards Bethesda. I like to take care of hills early so that was fine. Then, of course, I love the downhills. Here I caught up to Sharyn Gordon and I ran right behind her for the 2nd half of the hill. Unfortunately, I had to take a quick walk break at the bottom of the hill and she just kept going. A few people passed me during the third mile but they never got too, too far ahead. I hoped to catch them with a good last mile. One of those people was Father Frank Gignac. I know he's a priest because he always wears a Catholic University T-shirt (my undergrad school) so I looked him up a couple of years ago. He was the asst. track coach back then. The guy is 75 and still looks good! Anyway, I kept throwing spurts at Father Frank during that last mile in a valiant attempt to catch up. I would get to within 20 yards or so and then have to take a walk break. I did this 3 or 4 times, always with the same result. Thinking I lost my chance I took a longer walk break with just 1/4 mile to go. Then I started running again. I was making up a lot of ground in a hurry. I could see the finish line approaching. It was going to be close. In the final 50 yards, I was taking 2 strides for every 1 that he made. As we closed to just 10 yards from the finish, I was just 6 feet behind him. Unfortunately, there was some congestion at the finish line. He blocked most of the available path. I didn't want to bump into him so I ran on his left shoulder. We crosed the finish line nearly stride for stride in an identical time of 47:24. (My watch time was 46:59...it was a narrow starting chute with a lot of runners). But he did beat me by a nose. I think I would have had him if the finish line were clear and we had a bit more room but thats the way a race goes.

I did beat a couple of people that usually run near me...Blair Jones finished right behind me in 49:10 and Ric Franke finished right behind her in a time of 50:51. All things considered, I was happy with my results for this race. I beat a couple of people I should beat, bettered my time from 10 days earlier by over 4 minutes, and averaged under 12 minutes a mile.

Notable finishers for this race were:
Robert Wade 20:36 (Winner)
Karsten Brown 22:28
Ted Poulos 22:39
Kirk Gordon 26:41 (2nd age group)
Marie Sandrock 26:44 (first female)
Jim Moreland 26:53 (3rd age group)
Jay Wind 27:22
Jon Palks 32:59
Sharyn Gordon 43:23

I finished 158 out of 165 finishers. That was my 24th race of the year.