Mother's Day 5K

Today's race was the Mother's Day 5K . It started and finished in the sports field behind the Port Moody Social Rec Centre. I met clubmate Rick Woods and his friend Frank who was visiting from Seattle, plus Rob Daniel, Teresa Nightingale, Bill Chang, Jo Astoria, Scott Stewart and his grandson Cameron Nelson before the race and we all exchanged pleasantries and wished each other luck. The race started at 9 AM sharp, and we took off and did one lap of the field, then it was out the gate, over the railroad tracks, and onto a concrete path in the woods. It was an out and back, fairly flat for the first kilometer, and then we hit some hills that slowed me down a bit. I was surprised that even after the 2nd kilometer I could still see Teresa and Rick about 50 meters in front of me, but they turned it up a notch and by the time we hit the turnaround they had at least 100 meters on me. The day was warming up but luckily we had some good tree cover so we were in the shade most of the time. At last we came to the 4K marker, and I sped up and passed a few people, but then I heard a couple of others on my tail, and as we reached the turnin to the field and the finish line, a young fellow whizzed past me, and then a guy who looked to be in my age group. I tried to catch up to him as we rounded the field and headed into the finish, but he sped up too and matched me step for step. I sprinted in and a volunteer removed my ankle chip, and I went to look for Rick.

I saw Rick but he was way over on the other side of the field and heading away from me, so I reversed direction and headed to the refreshment area. They had water, various juices and coffee to drink, plus massive amounts of delicious cookies, muffins and bagels, bananas, oranges and bags of potato chips, tortilla chips, and cheese puffs to eat. Tim Hortons also had a truck set up on another side of the field where you could get coffee, hot chocolate, and Tim Bits.

Since it took awhile for everything to finish and the start of the awards ceremony, I ended up eating way too many cookies, chips, etc. They had so much they were telling even hogs like myself to keep eating lots, and then at the end they even had a big box of little bags with Tim Bits in them that they told everyone to take.

Scott Stewart was telling me about some of the old time elite Olympic runners including one fellow named Carey Nelson, when up he walked. He's been "retired" for quite a few years now but recently started racing again, and finished 4th overall in today's race. He mentioned that in a couple of years he'll be in my age group, and he laughed when I said that this wouldn't be good for me. He's actually a very soft spoken, humble guy, and told both myself and Scott that we'd done very well today, and he'd be seeing us again.

Carey left us to go talk to some other people, and then they had the kids' races. First there was a hundred meter dash for the little tykes, and there looked to be about 50 in that one, and then there was an 800 yard race that looked to have at least 100 participants. In both of them some of the kids could really fly, and they all looked like they were having a great time just running it!

They finally got to the awards and many draw prizes. Mother's Day roses had already been given to all the women participants after they crossed the finish line. Teresa was 3rd in her age group and she and her son Alex were 3rd in the team awards. In the 60-64 male category I knew all the winners, Bruce Wark was 1st, Scott was 2nd, and Rick was 3rd.In the prize draws Cameron won a $50 gift certificate to a restaurant, and Rick won a Timex watch, so we had a pretty good group haul of stuff. Myself I finished 52nd overall out of 280 and 5 of 11 in my age group, with a time of 20:39. http://www.raceheadquarters.com/results/2012/run/MDSpringClassic2012OA.html

Rick wouldn't let me take a picture of them but he did take one of me.

We were all baking our white flesh in the sun, so it was time to go and say goodbye until our next competitions together. Cameron told me he'd definitely be out again competing at Scott's next race, he's really enjoying himself, and I told him that was great!

My next jaunt is the 10K race at the Peach City Half & 10K in Penticton at 8 AM this coming Sunday, May 20th.