My First Running Award

On Saturday, April 26th, I ran a local 5k race in Maugensville, MD. The "Hustle for Hydration" was put on by Maugensville Elementary School's third graders as a fundraiser to build a water well in Haiti. This was a semi-local race for a good cause so it was an easy decision to put this one on the calendar.

Wearing my new Raw Threads shirt!

The website for this event advertised a 9 am start time. So I arrived at the elementary school around 8:15. After a somewhat unorganized registration process, I learned that the race actually started at 9:30 am. After hanging out in my car for a while (Matthew was away at a conference so I didn't have my race buddy), it was time to race.

I think there may have been 60 people total at the race, and probably at least 30 elementary school students. We all lined up as the race organizers gave us an overview of the course- there would be chalk on the ground and small cardboard signs to show us the way. After a few more announcements, we were off!

At the starting line.

This course was generally flat, through quiet neighborhoods, and with little or no traffic. I was able to keep a pretty fast-for-me pace throughout the race. Around mile two, I finally caught up with a man pushing a kid in a stroller who had been in front of me the entire race- I was determined to beat the guy pushing 80+ pounds :-) Once I passed him, I honed in on a young girl and her father whom I had been chasing all race. Around mile two and a half, I blew past them and starting pushing towards the finish.

I knew that I was keeping a pretty good pace. As I got near the finish line, I pulled out my phone so I could stop the Map My Run app when I finished. I crossed, stopped the app, and checked out my time- 30:35. That would have been a kick-ass PR, if the course would have been 3.1 miles. As it turns out, my app only recorded 2.99 miles. I wasn't 100% sure if the course was mismarked or if my app simply hadn't recorded the full distance correctly. I asked another runner what he got from his Garmin and he got 2.98 miles. So I'm guessing that the course was short. Either way, my average pace was awesome- 10:13.

After the race, I stuck around to cheer on the finishers behind me. After everyone had finished, they started to call out names for awards. Because this race had a lot of kids, they had four award categories: Adult Women, Adult Men, Female Students, Male Students. There weren't that many adult women- maybe 10 total. They called out the top adult woman finisher and then they announced the 2nd place finisher, 3rd place finisher, 4th place finisher, and then... me! I actually finished 5th in this race out of all adult women- how insane is that?! I even got a ribbon :-)

Woohoo!

So, even though it's not a new PR for me because the course was short, it still was a fun race and I got my first running-related award. Not too bad for a Saturday morning :-)

QOTD: Have you ever ran a race where the course was a different distance than advertised? Would you still count it as a PR if the course was short?