I love my wife. She is great. For years now she has supported my running habit, going to races to cheer me on, often having to spend hours hanging around to cheer me for a few seconds as I ran by. She did it again today – she got up early (around 6:15 a.m.) and rode with me for about 30 minutes, hung out while I picked up my bib number and t-shirt, walked the half-mile to the starting line, waited for about 20 minutes for my race to start, and then waited about 20 minutes to scream like a madwoman at me for 30 seconds as I finished the race, then waited about 10 minutes for me to cool off enough to be able to drive home (although not long enough for me to stop smelling sweaty), and rode with me the 30 minutes back home. All in all, she got up at 6:15 a.m. and spent two hours in transit and in waiting time in order to scream at me for 30 seconds. She is wonderful. What a woman.

So, five months of training while focusing on speed all came down to today. My goal all along was to get so I could run a 5k in less than 20 minutes. 8:00 this morning, at the 14th annual Tallmadge Memorial Day 5k, was Show Time.

There was a very good-sized crowd at the starting line, and I managed to get near the front, about the third row. The race director was asking people to line themselves up with their pace in mind, and I was near the front, which was supposed to be the 5- and 6-minute/mile group. That was a bit of a stretch (I was aiming for 6:20/mile), but I wanted to get off of the line quickly. There was no “chip time” in this race, where timing is handled by a chip on your shoe; the official time would be whatever the clock said it was, with no correction on how long it took to get to the starting line. In my case, I think it resulted in about a one-second delay, which was no big deal. I got off quickly, and managed to dodge a few runners who were starting more slowly, and got into what I felt was a fast but doable pace.

I passed a fair number of people for the first three-quarters of a mile. That was encouraging. What was less exciting was that I was not feeling very good. I could not put my finger on it – every individual thing felt good – legs felt fine, lungs were okay, breathing seemed steady, but I just did not feel right. It got so bad around the one-mile marker that I thought I was going to have to walk some. I managed to gut through that section, and after we turned around on that leg of the course, I saw that I had been going up a hill for a good bit, and that was probably what was making me feel tired. Since I trained on a flat treadmill with only speed in mind, hills get to me pretty quickly. I had come down a fairly big hill on the front part of the race, so this did not bode well for the return trip.

According to my watch, I got to the mile marker around 6:25 or so, so I was doing okay. The return trip down the small hill was fine, and I got some of my legs back, so the second mile was uneventful, coming in at a low 13-something (I don’t remember now what it was exactly). That brought me to the base of the big hill on the course, where the course abruptly veered right into a residential neighborhood. This concerned me as well. There were only two possibilities: the added distance was flat and would bring me back to the base of the hill after running more distance, or the added section would have the elevation in it, probably as a longer section. It was the second possibility. The hill was in the last part of the residential area, and was more gradual than what we had gone down, but as such was longer. I almost had to stop and walk again, but I managed to keep the legs going, although I had to slow down a little in the middle of the hill.

From the top of the hill, you could start to hear the crowd and the PA speakers after just a short distance. I got to where I could see the finish line, and I tried to run in hard. In this case, that consisted of maintaining my pace – I was very tired, and I had nothing left to run faster. I looked at my watch and saw that I was in the low 19s. This was going to be very close. I got near the finish line and heard Meredith screaming her heart out. Even in my run-induced fog, that made me quite happy. She was going berserk. I ran into the finish line, and as I crossed the line I looked up at the clock board. 20:01.

I’m still hoping that the official time will be 19:59, since I did not look up immediately, but I think that is wishful thinking. I’m also pretty sure my watch still said 19:50-something, but I was so wiped out I forgot to stop the timer, so I have no firm record on my watch. It turns out that the 1 second or so that it took me to get to the starting line was important.

So, I did not achieve my goal, but I’m still fairly happy. I managed to run through a race that had some hills in it, and that was hotter than I would have liked (by 10-15 degrees), and I managed to keep myself running despite wanting to stop twice. Also, it is my fastest 5k time in at least 15 years, by a good 30 seconds or more, and more than three minutes faster than my Fourth of July race from last year. And, my wife is proud of me. How can that be a bad race?