3rd Place - Courtesy of Gary Westlund, Charities Challenge
Timing an event is hard enough (or can be). And even racing can be hard enough. However, if you put the two together and combine the pressure of both can be overwhelming. I know many timers who have tried to do both and they have had mixed results. However, their problem was that they didn’t have any helpers to free them up. I on the other hand didn’t have to worry too much about the timing today because my brother (Danny) did all the raceday registration and all I had to do was enter the bib numbers into the computer. We had a wireless timer so the computer could stay put and be away from everyone else without having to worry about cords and such. We had volunteers running the timer and taking the tags off the runners. For me I really didn’t have to worry about the timing, I rarely do. My race however wasn’t too bad, I felt good the whole way and ran nearly even splits of 9:03 & 9:05 (1.5 miles each). I didn’t break 18:00 but I did come close (18:09). The course is fast, but with the wind at the start and right after the midway point was hard to deal with and slowed me down a little bit. I was in third place the whole race and just couldn’t close on the leaders who beat be with times of: 17:21 & 17:41. I got beat the amazing Amy Lyons, who ran great but just couldn’t hold on to Brian Davenport. It was great and I was happy with my time, with the training I have been doing (about 5 miles a day for about 4 months) this was a pretty good showing for me. I plan to start stepping up my training this week to get more miles in. I’m just trying to stay healthy so i can get a great summer of training in for cross country season. Any way, enough about that results can be found here: http://wayzataresults.com/roadraces/2009/RiseNShine/.
Courtsey of Gary Westlund - Charities Challenge