Mason Mini-Marathon

Just a little bit about a race I did back on Nov. 3, the Mason Mini-Marathon. This one was a 15k in Mason, Ohio. Start and finish were at Mason High School, which is where I ran the Race for the Cure about 2 months earlier.

Susan came along to run it with me. This was her longest race to date. They had technical tops for people who signed up early. Susan didn’t, but I traded with her for the regular race t-shirt because I liked it better and the tech top was nothing special.

It was a little chilly at the start but we could hang out inside the high school, which was quite nice. It was not a very big race, so the lines were not too long for the bathrooms.

We started in the high school parking lot, then ran a loop of an adjoining park on a narrow bike trail (rather hilly), then back out and around the outside of the high school parking lot, out along the big road where the Race for the Cure took place (only they kept us on the sidewalk for this one), up a side street to a turn around and back to the school.

Weather was pleasant, sunny and not too cold. My race goal was somewhere between 1:24 and 1:30---I really didn’t know what I would do but that was the range of what seemed likely. Our goal for Susan was about a 1:35, despite the fact that she tends to kick my butt when we train together.

I felt good and ran what I think was a well-paced race with an even effort throughout, and finished in 1:23:55 on my watch, 1:24:08 official time. This put me 5 of 13 in my age group, 55 of 139 women, and 155 of 278 overall runners.

I saw that Susan was well behind me when we I was running back towards the high school in mile 7, but she looked strong. After I finished and grabbed some water and bananas, I went back out to wait for her. 1:35 came and went and still no Sooze. You could see the runners coming in from at least a half-mile away on the other side of the parking lot. I was starting to get worried, when she came up behind me.

Turned out that when she got to the part where you were supposed to turn into the parking lot, there was nobody left directing the runners. So, Susan and another woman who was running with her just kept going straight past the high school. By the time they realized their mistake, they had run quite a good bit farther than 15k. So she didn’t cross the finish line, but she did get a 10 mile run in for the weekend. They did collect her tear-off tag at the end anyway, and still gave her an official time. She is not too happy about that extra and unfairly slow time being recorded for posterity.

Post-race, we stopped for breakfast at the Perkins that was just down the road. That’s a good place for a post-race repast!