Ronald McDonald 5k for Women, 10/4/09 (results)
This was a breakthrough race for me. At the Downtown 5k, I had just cracked 19:00, running 18:58 (chip time, 19:01 gun time). I expected it to take a while to take off the next minute, but I ended up running 18:26 at this race, making the top five and beating some really fast people.
I had wanted to get in the top five, because there was money for the top five. However, when the gun went off, I quickly put that goal out of my head. An Olympian (Amy Rudolph), two Kenyans, a local track star who can run 4:50 in the mile (Steph Reilly), and a bunch of other fast people were all around. One minute or so into the race, I actually laughed out loud -- what am I doing up here in the front with all these people?
Rudolph, a Kenyan, and Reilly were in a pack in the front. Then the second Kenyan, then a girl in a white shirt. I got into the pack behind all those people, and just hung with them. We went through the mile in something like 5:45. Here we are at the mile. Trish Hillery is still leading this little pack.
Eventually three of us -- I didn't know who any of these people were at the time, but it turns out they are Kim and Katie -- broke off from the rest of them in our little pack. The girl in white was far ahead of us, and everyone else far ahead of her. But I just hung on to Kim and Katie. Here we are a little before mile 2.
Kim took the lead and I kept hanging on. We were gaining on the girl in white (Nicole Radzik). With about a quarter of a mile to go, Katie and I passed Kim and then passed the girl in white. It was a race for fifth place! We turned the corner and made a sharp turn into the Brown stadium onto the track. I kicked for everything, afraid that Katie would pass me back. But she didn't. Here is a picture of me trying to out-sprint Katie.
And the Kenyan was only two seconds ahead of me! We also won second place in the team competition, and I happened to win the raffle for shoes, so I went home with many presents.
2 comments:
Do the Kenyans have names?
Excellent question! Yes, they have names. However, their whole team drove up from Westchester County for this race, so I have not raced them before or since, and thus I do not know their names.
I have since run with Kim and Katie, and I've raced Nicole Radzik and Trish Hillery multiple times, and Steph Reilly and Amy Rudolph are at least locally famous, so their names roll off my tongue, and hence are included in this post.
I could have looked their names up before writing this post, but since I was dashing off eight or nine race reports all at once, I didn't.
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