You, Shoes. A First 5K Report!

Fit Milwaukee welcomes John Mosey – he tells all about his first race experience!

It is Race Day, my first race day since I got up off an extended stay on the couch and decided to start running. After training for months and pushing and running and planning for weeks, I wasn’t nervous because I didn’t really have goals or expectations. Breakfast with the race in mind. Get dressed with the race in mind. Go to sleep the night before with the race in mind.  One last check to make sure I knew were I was going, and when I had to be there. Ok, maybe a little nervous.

The first thing I learned about my first 5k race is I brought too much stuff. It was a fairly-cold 40 degrees, enough that you wear a jacket to the run but not during it. I brought my entire workout bag, with a water bottle, gloves, a place to stash my jacket. I was feeling like the guy who brings the giant bag of hockey gear to the family skate. Apparently to run you need:

• you
• shoes

Being lost and confused like a small puppy in a skin-tight shirt, it was comforting to see friends. I can’t believe anyone would just do this on their own without any support. It would be a lot easier to just leave in the confusion than stick around possibly end up running in the wrong direction or something. I wasn’t even REALLY sure where the starting line was until we passed it.

Ten minutes to race time. I am standing in a group of people somewhere near where I think the race starts. I think this is near the start this because the people I was with moved in that direction then stopped walking.

It was fun to see all the styles. Some people were amping themselves up. Some just looked hung over. Some were putting in their headphones and others were stretching in a myriad of ways. I wished I could read the minds of the hundreds of people there, knowing which ones thought of this as a donation with a finish line and which were trying to reach some personal goal, or whatever thought they had in their head.

I was deep into a conversation first about gloves, then about if your nose drips do you wipe it on your sleeve or snot rocket to the side? I fell into the sleeve wiping category, mainly because of poor nasal velocity.

And the race starts! Sort of… Being some place in the middle of 900 people means you don’t exactly get off the blocks like a sprinter. My first reaction was “stop pushing me” and “I hope I don’t fall over.”  It took a good 10 seconds (or more if I want to take seconds off my finish time) to get out of the pile.

Then it was slow, sometimes running-in-place-slow. Most people start the race at the same pace, but as the crowd evens out, people get tired it spreads out. This worked for me since I didn’t do much of a warm up and the first quarter mile was slow running and like a fun game of weaving in and out to of traffic to catch people I had already fallen behind.

Some time around half a mile I am feeling great (it was mostly downhill) and I hear people wheezing around me. The race leaders are already done with a mile and well out of my sight. There is still a big bunch of people and so no worries about who you are chasing or who is passing you. Mainly the rule is “run at your speed and don’t fall over.”

A mile is done and I am hearing someone call out times. I don’t even own a watch so I had no idea what my pace was. Just going with what seemed to be the crowd I finished the first mile much faster than I normally do. Part of my reaction was “slow down you will wear out.” Meanwhile, I am feeling good.

The crowd is thinned out and things are good, until my back went out. Not a leg or a lung or a foot running type injury. Instead, my middle back decided it wasn’t going to play. Painful in a “ouch stop” way not a “this is building muscle, keep going” way cramp. But I am in the middle of a race, my first race. I am not going to pull over and do yoga here. It is cramping up with every step and I am grimacing feeling my self slow down. Not that slow, still a pace much faster than normal.

Sometime around then just past a mile I see the leaders streak by in the other direction, meaning they are almost 2 miles in. I swear at them for being athletic freaks of nature without back cramps. I recognize a couple of them from pre-race as those guys who looked way too into a “fun run.”

Mile and a half, turn around. I count in my head the number of seconds my friends pass me in the other direction until I turn around and double it to see how far they are ahead of me. One pair is a minute and a half, the other about 30 seconds. I can catch up the thirty seconds.

My back says otherwise, I speed up, it complains. I slow down it stings more. I run heel to toe, it yells. It was like my mother-in-law was running with me. At this point I am going down hill again and passing people. My legs feel great, The tight turn around area is more people passing, that fun little “find a hole and duck between them” game.

Two miles. Someone is counting time again and despite slowing down because of my back and given up all hope of catching my friends my time is still pretty good. I am not having fun due to pain but speed up anyway. I know I can’t keep up the pace but correctly guess my back cramps will shut me down before my endurance.

I need to walk. Trying to walk fast I am getting passed by everyone. It’s depressing. Old woman pushing a stroller. A kid who looks like he is running for his 5th piece of cake. A man running so awkwardly I wonder if he has any original parts left. Soccer moms in matching outfits that make me wonder if they agreed to do this after margaritas the night before.

Walking a bit I hear things better. Almost everyone is out of breath, almost worrisome so. Some people make a lot of noise when they run. Most people are looking down at their shoes.

Ok, time to run again, so I do. Try my pace, it hurts… keep going… keep going…. Quarter mile later, stop again. Walking… walking. Swearing…

I imagine with a good half mile to go the clock has already ticked past what I wanted my finish time to be. I hate this race, I hate my back. I hate the way my bib with a number keeps flapping up. I hate that old guy that just passed me. I hate that really tall guy playing music too loud in his headphones. I realize my legs feel super fresh and I want to run.

Because it was an out and back route I knew how far away I was. I decide my back is going to hurt if I keep running or walking when I am done. So, I run. I run faster than the other part of the race. Passing people who are much “slower” than I am feels kind of nice. I pick someone, catch up and pass them. The woman in all black, the guy in the stupid hat, hey fat kid, I’m going to pass you and eat your 5th piece of cake!

Running up a giant hill at the end. I think it was Mt Everest, but I didn’t see a sign. I am thinking “I am not letting an 80 year old man beat me” when someone is yelling “one tenth of a mile from here.” I run faster. Pretty much sprinting up a giant hill with a sore back… it sucks. I am wondering why I thought this was a good idea.

Another woman with a stroller falls in my wake. I see my friends. They have finished. I think they had lunch already and came back to see me finish. They are cheering me on. They don’t know I walked twice for a bit but they do see me hauling ass up a hill to the finish line.

I look up and I see the giant clock. Much to my surprise I am still a minute below my goal time and not that far away now. I am running as fast as I can up a hill so steep most people are falling off and hanging on by their fingertips adventure-movie-style.

I pass the finish line. WAIT, no I don’t there is just a bunch of people in my way and I stopped running with 10 feet to go.  Get out of my way woman in yellow shorts. Who wears that any way?  I hear my number and look up at the big clock.

As I am being shuffled into some line for some reason I see everyone tugging at their numbered bib, so I do too. Realizing I beat my goal time by a decent margin I almost forget my mother-in-law of a back is still screaming at me and am kind of happy.

That passed and I become very disappointed. I wander over to where my friends were. I really don’t want to talk about it because I know I have to say I walked due to my back. Once again I can’t think of how anyone would do this without people they know there. They are all supportive and even if it is BS, it felt good to hear “it was only your first race” and “you looked great coming up that hill.”

Because of my two rests I am recovered but I see everyone else sucking wind.

I learned you can drink beer after a race. I also learned you get really cold fast. We wandered beer-in-hand to the check in building (it is soooo far away!) and I grab my giant bag of stuff. There are orange halves (how do you eat half an unpeeled orange was a new game I learned) and bread (yes, really) also water bottles of course. Between whining about my race I learn someone in our group placed third. My first thought is how quickly they figured it out.

More time spent with friends as we wait for awards. There are lots of things to discuss, observations on the course, the people (look at that hair!) milling around, still playing the eat-half-an-orange game. No one seems tried any more. Everyone seems pretty happy, even the fat kid who I beat up the hill.

Did I have fun? Maybe. I finished, shockingly, faster than I expected but can’t help think if I didn’t walk I’d have done even better. In retrospect I am mad I didn’t run through it. Obviously, at the time I thought that wasn’t going to happen.

If there is anything I would give as advice is make sure you have people you know with you. Experienced is better but any friends will do. It makes everything easier and you can talk and bounce ideas off of them. I can’t talk much about in-race feeding off each other or chatter because I got left behind as the runt of the litter.

Without friends running I may not do it again, but I plan to have a second race (and a better time) because of it. The support, the advice the encouragement all helps. Before I left my wife said, “remember, slow and steady wins the race.”  I reminded her that fast and steady actually wins the race but slow and steady is a good start, and a good first race. That is unless you are running up a gigantic mountain full speed with a cramped up back. That is always going to suck.