Jeapordy Answer....First Loooooooser!!

Question: What is 2nd place?

Last night I ran the 5th races in the Westford Academy Summer Series. This was the first time where this race really felt like summer. It was 77 degrees and almost 100% humidity.

Every week features a new twist to the race to keep it interesting. This race had a "guess your time" sub race challenge. So I was feeling pretty good when I arrived and I set my predicted time at 23:00. My PR this year on the course is 22:53 so I thought that this was doable.

I did my warm up run and was feeling a little sluggish so I went back to the estimation list and changed my time to 23:30, which was right around where I've run a couple times this year.

I scanned the crowd and there were all the usual people, Allen Hall (who won last weeks race), Rick Porter who is in the 30 - 39 age category and has run really well but due to the lack of other people in this age category has only managed to score 1 point at each race. Allen and I started talking and noticed that there was one kid who was warming up and looked like the guy to beat. We'll see.

I'm currently leading the 50 - 59 group in scoring and this race was an important one to show up to. That is because it was the North Medford club (NMC) night at the race. NMC has tons of people in their 50's so there were going to be a lot of points on the line. Missing this race could possible drop me out of 1st place in the series.

Paul, the race director said a few words and welcomed the members of NMC. There was a big cheer. This was the largest number of runners this season. The funny thing is that way back in the 70's I was a NMC member. Fred Brown had recruited me into the club while I was still in high school. Fred was quite a character and really the founding father of road running in NE. My dad used to direct the Chelmsford Elks 7.(who really knows the distance) road race back then and Fred used to come over our house for meetings with my dad. He could surely put down a cold one or two in his day.

Anyway soon the horn was sounded and off we went. The kid that Allen and I picked out took the lead right away. The kid I forced into a puddle during week 1's race (John Edward) took 2nd and I fell into third. The kid in the lead just took off. John has been getting stronger every week so for the first mile I just let him go. I couldn't hear any foot steps behind me after a mile so I just focused on John's back as we started climbing the hills. Slowly but surely I hunted John down and going up the hills just past mile 2 I passed him. I surged when I passed him to try and break his sprite because John is only a teenager and with young legs if I let him hang on to my shoulder he was sure to out kick me. My surge did the trick and soon John was about 40 yard behind me.

At the mile 3 marker I was starting to loose my form and was shifting to survival mode. At this point in the course you're running on a dirt road that is covered with 3/4 inch stone. So the footing isn't that good and if your tired it really makes for a rough 1/2 a mile. As I turned off the road and into the school parking lot I took a peak over my shoulder and saw Allen and John ruining shoulder to shoulder about 40 yards back. With about 300 yards to go I figured I could push it in and be able to hold both of them off. Not like 2 weeks ago when Cathy Parker ran me down like a wounded animal and shat me out the back side and managed to put 7 seconds between us in the exact same circumstances. Cathy is turely a gifted runner and I will stand no chance of even running in the same zip code as her when she gets into good shape.

As I rounded the corner and up the little hill onto he track I could see the clock turn 22:50. Now I'm thinking, "maybe I have a chance to break 23 minutes". I started to push with everything I had but alas I crossed the line in 23:04. Good enough for 2nd place, AKA FIRST LOOSER!!

I was happy with my effort but I should have gone with my first instinct and kept the time of 23 minutes as my estimated time. Oh well I guess I don't get another t-shirt for my efforts. I can live with that!!!