A Tale of Two Races

Ok, so this past weekend had me put my running prowess once again to the test, but with a twist--for the first time ever, I dared to run hard races on back to back days--while I originally had only planned to run on Sunday, October 12, a work colleague told me about a short 3 mile run right across the river (Rutherford) on October 11.

There's a side story to share about Saturday's run. During the summer my Aunt Margaret and I had been talking about running in a race together again (mind you our last run together in any kind of race dated back to 1988). Well, when this opportunity surfaced in Rutherford, home to more relatives of mine (the Waller family), I thought I'd encourage my aunt to run in it. She had built up to that distance already, so the biggest concern she could possibly have that day were stomach butterflies! As a bonus, my cousin Anna would also take part in the race (I warned her since she was so young she'd better be WAY ahead of us).

The Rutherford race was a 3 mile run (the "Pumpkin Run"). The course weaved through town, starting and ending in the park just off Washington Street. As was expected, Anna placed ahead of my aunt and I, somewhere around 27 minutes. I came in at a respectable 30:15, and my aunt a bit over 32 minutes (I can't seem to find official results on the internet). After the race I unfortunately couldn't really relish too much in my performance, because I had my normal Saturday afternoon errands to run and work to do at the house, and then finally rest up for a much longer run the next morning.

Okay, so I woke up Sunday morning slightly sore from the Rutherford race, but knew what I had to do. I got myself ready and headed up to the Oval in Nutley. I did my normal warmups and played the waiting game. Again my work colleague Aaron and his wife and brother in law were in this race. I caught up with them just before the race to shoot the breeze and help kill time.

Then the officials began to do the start cadence. At that instant in time the worst possible thing happened--my Zune froze on me and I couldn't restart it! I tried everything to get it to once again play music but it had shut down and showed no signs of life. Then the pistol sounded and the race began. So, I began running with the group, but tried like heck to breathe some life into my media player, otherwise it would be a long, long run without tunes. After a few minutes of trying, I gave up the struggle, and refocused on the task at hand, despite the time it was going to take me!

Carrying my seemingly dead mp3 player, I took the beginning of my run up a notch to clear myself from the back of the pack to someplace a bit more well--not near last. I gained a lot of ground and passed a number of runners between the first and second miles of running. One of the race coordinators snapped this picture of me and emailed it--



At around the 3 mile mark of the race was the first time I thought I had a chance to at least match, if not surpass, my time of 54:23 last year. I tried on the straightaways of Washington Avenue and Center Street to gain more ground by picking up speed. When I hit Franklin Ave at the 50 minute mark, I knew I had at a personal best in the bag, it was just a question of how much faster. Well, I ended at a 53:33, almost a minute faster!!

As long as my legs, hips, knees, ankles, and all parts in between keep letting me, rest assured you'll see more stories like this in the years to come! I only hope I'll have more success stories to share...until next time!