Running 25:58 [2] 5.0 km (5:12 / km)
slept:6.0
Ran the Seneca Park Zoo Jungle Jog with Zach - his first 5K, ever. It took us about 13 seconds to get to the starting line, so I backed that out of the time - the official time was 26:11. We started out conservatively, and the first mile was uphill, so we went thru in 9:03 (8:50 for the mile). There was no 2 mile mark (one of several problems I had with this race), so we didn't know where we were, but Brenna (and Anne) went by us, so after we got out of the zoo, Zach ran hard down the hill and caught and got some space on Brenna. She closed most of the gap, and Zach's shoe was about to fall off (it had been untied since just after the mile mark), so I tied it for him with about a half to go - losing about 10 seconds in the process. He caught Brenna again at the 3 mile mark (25:30, so averaged 8:13 for those 2 miles), but had used up too much and Brenna had a surprisingly strong kick and ran away.
I haven't run many road races lately, and am quite unlikely to do so if this is the current state of road race management. This was a Rochester Runner of the Year race - I expected competence, at least. Where do I begin? Thunderstorm? OK, they don't control the weather, and I know it's important to start the race on time (more on this in a minute), but if I was on the hook for 600(?) or so lives, I would have considered delaying the start. Perhaps I am just a wuss that was exposed to multiple high school track delays this spring. Course? It was a free-for-all thru the zoo parking lot. There were NO markings, so some people took a near beeline from the entrance to the lot, some people zig-zagged thru some parked cars, some people stayed wider - closer to the perimeter of the lot, and many people (Zach and I included) ran around some random car that was parked in the lot. Was the course certified?
Start times? OK, delaying the start of a race is a bad thing, and they chose not to delay the 5K start for lightning; however, accelerating the start of a race is UNACCEPTABLE, especially with no announcement! They just blew the air horn 7 minutes before the scheduled start of the kids 1-mile fun run and Luke was around the corner staying out of the rain, so he lost 23 seconds at the start. It was a mess.
Timing? OK, go with the fancy wire-in-the-number timing system - but make sure you have a foolproof backup system. 90 minutes after the start of the race, less than half of the finishers had been posted, and there were people missing from that half, including Patty. When I looked at the paper this AM, there's Patty in 4th place overall, in 19 minutes and change. I have no idea where they got that from, but use common sense - if a near-US age group record (?) shows up in the results, double-check something.
Well, at least I got to run thru the zoo - the first time I've been in it during the 23 years I've lived in Rochester (in the interim, I've been to at least 5 other zoos - off the top of my head).
Running 8:57 [2] 1.0 mi (8:57 / mi)
Ran the Jungle Jog One Mile Fun Run with Luke - his first race of this sort. He ran surprisingly even splits overall - he was 4:21 at the turnaround, and there was more than 15 seconds from back past the starting line, to the finish line, so he had a slight negative split. Since he started 23 seconds late, he had people to pass the whole way. He passed a couple of kids and I heard a "hey Luke", and a kid caught back up to Luke - it turned out to be a classmate named Royce, who tried to move back ahead of Luke, but didn't have quite enough left.
The course started right near the XC mile mark and ran out like the XC course, so it was nice and muddy from the rain - Luke had fun with that, running straight thru some of the puddles.
Running warm up/down 15:00 [2] 1.71 mi (8:45 / mi)
Various warm-up time, some alone, some with Walt and Patty, some with Zach.