Food on the Run 2013

Food on the Run is an annual 5k/10k put on by a local Cincinnati organization known as The Nutrition Council. The Nutrition Council's stated mission is to advance child health through nutrition education. I'm always hoping this will mean there will be plenty of good stuff to eat after the race but I'm always a little disappointed!

This year they had added on Chipotle as a sponsor, which isn't especially healthy if you are thinking about chips and guacamole and flour torillas. But I would not have minded if there was some Chipotle at the finish line. Instead, they had coupons for buy one, get one free. That's nice, but I'll just shove it in some corner of the car and forget about it. I'd rather have something I could have eaten immediately after the race.

They did have food after, just nothing terribly exciting. But more about that later.

So, last Saturday morning I did this race for the second year in a row. Both times I had hoped it would give me good news about how my training was progressing, and be a confidence builder for the upcoming marathon. It didn't work out that way last year. In retrospect, last year's goal was too ambitious and the training wasn't there.

This year my goal time for the marathon is slower, and I'm telling myself the training is better (well, I did compare the training logs this afternoon and I really think it is true---at least the mileage is higher).

My goal for this particular race was around 53 minutes or about 8:30 pace. That's about where I should be if I want to be able to run the marathon under 4:10. But I told myself that since I was not tapering for this race, just training through it, and even ran 6 miles the day before which I don't usually do the day before a race, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I ran slower than 53 minutes. I was trying to take the pressure off.

Arguably, I shouldn't even have been doing this race, at least, according to the Hanson's training program. But I like to race. I adjusted the schedule by skipping my tempo run last week.

The race started at 9 so I left the house around 8 am. The start and finish of the race are in Sawyer Point Park. The parking lot was fuller than last year, and this year they were charging $4. That's ridiculous, so I guess I won't be doing this race next year, unless they move it to a venue where we don't have to pay to park.

I jogged to the registration table, picked up my bib and shirt, and jogged back to the car, where I hung out  for ten minutes or so. It was colder downtown along the river than it was at my house. And it had started snowing. I started looking forward to the race being over.

I headed out for my warmup jog, which I did at a faster pace than usual because it was so cold. But by the time I finished, I didn't feel too uncomfortable. Seemed like my attire was going to work. I was wearing my technical top from State-to-State, thick black tights, white hat from Fargo, and the blue plastic pullover top from the 2000 FCR Nationals. And a pair of gloves.

Now that I've seen myself in this photo, I am wondering what happened to my resolution never again to appear in public unless I was wearing a turtleneck. I am hideous.

The first mile of the race takes you away from the river and out of downtown and up Gilbert Ave. (hill!). My watch said 8:35. Okay, just about right and felt okay. The course continues up Gilbert to a turnaround on Eden Park Drive. There was an aid station just past the turnaround on the downhill side of Gilbert, but I didn't want to stop on the downhill so I skipped it.

Mile 2 was another 8:35.We continued downhill and turned back onto the trail in the park. Mile 3 was an 8:28. So far, so good. I started trying to do math in my head to figure out what I needed to run in order to meet my goal.

You run out east along the river, then turn around and head back west towards the start and past it, before you turn around again and finally head back to the finish. So the last 3 miles are a fairly flat loop.

I took my gloves off and carried them in my hands. I remembered how last year I had tucked my gloves into the waistband of my fanny pack and ended up losing one. It was colder this year, so I took them on and off a couple of times.

Mile 4 was 8:07. Things were looking pretty good. There was another aid station around mile 4, and this time I grabbed a cup of water and drank a little.

I missed the mile 5 marker, but miles 5 and 6 were 16:46. We turned down towards the finish and I realized what had made me go off course last year. There was a woman standing in the middle of the path telling people to turn left for the 5k and right for the 10k. Last year I got confused and turned the wrong way before figuring out my mistake and getting back on the course.

Approaching the finish, I managed to kick past a bunch of people. Final .2 was a 1:32, for a final time of 52:16, about 8:26 average pace. So, I went a little faster last year, and well under my goal, which is a great confidence builder for the marathon to come.

After crossing the finish line, I started looking for the food. There was a slow moving line for the following items:

• Very hard assorted half-bagels
• Little packets of Cabot cheese, some kind of white cheddar?
• Boxes and boxes of KIND bars in various flavors (grabbed a bunch of these)
• Scary looking processed cookie snack of graham crackers and grape jelly
• Frozen bananas
• Very cold orange slices

There was another line, actually shorter, with hot (well, lukewarm) soup. They had two kinds: black bean and tomato basil. I didn't realize it was tomato basil for awhile because I swear the volunteers kept calling it "tomato base," which sounded gross, so I went with the black bean. Tomato base soup, what is that? Tomato is just the base for something else? What is it the base for?

So it was better than after most small local races but not by that much. I think they could do a little better. Why not some chips and guacamole? Huh? How about some little mini or cut up burritos? How about that, Chipotle?

While I finished my soup I stood around with a bunch of other obsessives staring at a couple of big video monitors that were scrolling the finish times. One monitor just had finish times. We were not interested in that one. The other had the age group placements. Unfortunately, at that point they only had the 5k results, so we had to wait a little while. Standing there in my wet and now cold running clothes, the only thing that kept me from feeling completely ridiculous was that I was not the only one doing it.

Finally we got the 10k results and I found out that I had indeed finished 3rd in my age group, so I went over to the awards table to pick up my award. Later on I wondered if they had given me the wrong thing, since it says 5k on it, and they did have some nicer looking items that maybe were intended for people who had placed in the 10k. Oh well. This was just a very generic medal that looks like something recycled from last year, with a new sticker on the front for this year. It truly was not worth waiting around in the cold for. The placement was important to me in itself but this piece of crap award was not.

I was 3 of 30 (compared to 4 of 45 last year) and 222 of 966 runners overall, but this is not especially impressive because it is a slow person's race. I did not recognize the names of any of the 27 women who finished in my age group behind me. Did recognize the first two as people I have never beaten!

Something unusual was that there was another race going on downtown on the same morning, a new event called the Bock Fest 5k.  This is part of a three race series that also includes a one mile race on Flying Pig weekend, and the old 14k race that was revived a couple of years ago. I wondered if some of the fast women in my age group had gone there instead since I didn't see them in the Food on the Run results. Turns out they did not, because I didn't recognize many of those names either.

There was one woman who did both the 5k at Food on the Run and then the Bock Fest 5k (10 am start). There was definitely enough time to finish Food on the Run and then jog over to Bock Fest. She won the 55-59 age group at Food on the Run, and then she also won the 50-55 group (not sure why they didn't use standard age groups except maybe they just didn't know any better) at Bock Fest.

Anyway, if it turns out that next year there is free parking at Bock Fest or if it is less than Food on the Run, I might do that one instead.