28th Annual Resolution Run 5k

Just like the other resolution runs I've done, I was pretty happy. They give a nice long sleeve T-shirt and awards in groups of 5 years for runners and separate 10 year groups for walkers. The shirt changes color in the sun and I'll include a second photo at the end with it in the sun, it's kind of neat. I wonder how many times you can wash it before that effect goes away or if it is permanent.

I don't normally write about other runners but I'll make this exception and throw a shout out to the 11 year old girl who was the overall woman's champ. I'm not good with ages but I knew she was fairly young. I was shocked when I checked the results at the end and found out just how young she was. There were several really good youngsters in the race today as well as several very good older runners. I believe the overall winner was 61 and came in running 5:55 minutes per mile! (I literally don't run that fast in my dreams and definitely not 22 years from now!) So with some quick math, the overall men's and overall woman's winners were 50 years apart, how cool is that!

I learned a valuable lesson today about my new "racing flats". The Nike Free 3.0 that I've been using for races have a deep waffle pattern on the bottom that make them super flexible. This is normally a good thing, but I had never used them at the Papago park area. A good portion of the course is pseudo cross country as you use a hard packed dirt and gravel path along the canals. The small rocks and such get caught between the nubs of my shoes! This wasn't much of an issue until I returned to the road and I was clicking like I was wearing cross country spikes. Much later on when I changed into my regular running shoes I pulled about two dozens rocks out of my shoes. I like the Papago course but I'll have to choose different shoes from now on.

In the end, a nice race.