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The Alaska Heart Run (5k) is a charity fundraiser for the Alaska chapter of the American Heart Association. Every year the event gets bigger and bigger and this year was no exception. With almost 6,000 participants raising more than $200.000, it was a great success.
The Heart Run is the start of a season of runs across the state and a testimony to all my winter training. This year I finished with two personal records… one for fastest pace and the other for overall time. I finished in 21:24 with a pace of 6:54. It felt incredible.
The 3.1 mile course stretches across the UAA and APU college campus with only one hill. As we came to the first mile there was a volunteer shouting out the time, “seven oh four, seven oh seven” and so on. I knew at that point I was pacing fairly well. I just didn’t know how well.
By this point I had identified a couple of people that were running just a little stronger than me. They kept a pace that pushed me to keep going, I wanted to beat them. I wanted to put them behind me and a few times I did. There was this one guy who was running in front of me that I just had to pass.
He was running strong, but everything about him hurt my eyes. He had the worse form but it didn’t seem to bother him, nor did it slow him down. He had a week left ankle that seemed to roll with every step. He was hunched over at the shoulders and had a large arch in his back. He came down with a thud on his heels as he lingered just in front of me always blocking my path around him. I was going crazy thinking that this guy was beating me.
We played a back and fourth game for the first 2 miles and then all that bad form caught up to him and I could tell he was getting tired. I made my move and never looked back. I don’t know what his name was or his overall time, but I do know I finished ahead of him.
I saw him later after we had both completed the 5k race. I wanted to go up to him and tell him what a great job he did, but in my head it just sounded so smug. I didn’t want to come across as and a-hole, so I just gave him the congratulatory nod. He did the same in return.
Now onto the other person I had my eyes set on. She was an older female maybe in her late 30’s early 40’s. You could tell she was no rooky at this running thing. She had excellent form and never seemed to be out of breath. We paced each other several times. She always seemed to move ahead of me with minimal effort. Several times she got far enough ahead of me that I lost her in the crowed.
We approached the finish line in the same group of 12 or so people. When we came around the corner and no one got excited I yelled out to go and began pumping my legs and arms as hard and fast as I could. I just barley passed the woman to finish seconds ahead of her.
As I tried to catch my breath with my already burning lungs, I felt a heave come up from deep in my gut. I ran over to where no one would see and gave up a victory-puke.
It was a great race and one I look forward to next year. If the rest of the season is at all as good as this run I am in for an incredible summer of fun.
