For a whole week, I've been in training for this year's Gate River Run/USA 15k Championship. This year, the course has changed... the start was on Gator Bowl Blvd, just south of Jacksonville Municipal Stadium (or "No-tell Stadium", as my wife likes to call it), with the finish actually being on the field! Of course, leading up to the run, all eyes were on the weather, as the storm that absolutely drenched/buried the east coast this week also hit North Florida.
As it turns out, the rain stopped during the early morning hours before the race, but that left high winds. Very high winds. Like 25mph winds... with gusts up to 40. Heading out to the start, it was coooooold -- about 55 degrees (yes, that's cold in this area). Coffee would have been great, but I gave up caffeine for Lent. That may have been a mistake. I probably should have done what Lana did and given up TV. It would have been much better for me, but then again, it's during basketball season, and that would really hurt. But I digress...
We got to the stadium parking lot just before the 5k was scheduled to start. We still had about an hour until the start of the 15k, but we had a ways to go, and we were hoping to meet up with some of our friends, so we stripped down. I still wore a long sleeve shirt with running shorts, but Lana stripped down to a t-shirt and running shorts -- she must have been jacked up to not freeze in that weather! Somehow, we actually managed to find Megan before the race, but she came in from Chicago late the night before, so still had to run to the expo and get her race number. Lana ran off to find Mike and Chris, but they were already up near the starting corral, so they didn't want to come back to where we were. Lana came and got us and we were off to the start.
Now, since I just had gotten my new brace, had no training, etc., I was thinking that I would be walking most of the race. You know, like my training walk last weekend. So I started heading back towards the walkers... and kept walking... and kept walking. I ended up almost getting back to the car before I found the walkers! Of course, in my mind, I'm already rationalizing that I'm not going to walk the *whole* thing, so I stayed just a touch ahead of the actual walkers. At this point, with 12,000+ of my closest friends gathered around me, Megan was actually able to find me again! Granted, it might have been the orange long sleeve UVA shirt I was wearing, but still, that's a honking load of people!
Then there was The Star-Spangled Banner, the blast of the cannon, and we were off!
Well, kinda. Of course, being back as far as I was, it took 7 minutes before I walked across the starting line. And then there was the crush of people trying to take off, and this was my first mistake (have you noticed that most of my blog entries have that exact phrase in them somewhere?). I started running. Just a bit, and pretty slowly, to get out of the way of the throngs. Then, after about 1/3 of a mile, I saw Jaxson DeVille (the Jacksonville Jaguars' mascot) and his big ol' head flopping along the course, so I had to run up and get a picture:
After that grand experience, I was still feeling pretty good, so I was doing some easy jogging, peppered with walk breaks (of course). The first couple miles of the course are pretty uneventful, just winding through the streets of downtown Jacksonville. Of course, when we were running past the Maxwell House plant, that was absolute torture (see above re: gave up caffeine), but I powered through it. The wind was hitting pretty hard, even at this point, and there were a lot of hats scattered around on the ground where they blew off people's heads -- people obviously more competitive than I am, because I would go back and get my damn hat! As it was, I had to turn mine around so that it wouldn't fly off my head.
Our first major hurdle was crossing the Main Street Bridge. This is a lift bridge across the St. Johns River, and it's annoying to run across. The flooring is this nasty metal grating that is hard enough to run over without the high winds, but the winds made it incredibly difficult! Plus, I'm always afraid to run across that grating anyway. So I walked... and not even that quickly. I mostly just focused on not getting blown away. If only I knew what was ahead of me!
After the bridge, we started running into the historic San Marco area of town. These are some beautiful houses right near the river, and running in this area is always nice. It's generally almost like a realty walk -- come look at the nice houses I'll never be able to afford. But this time was slightly different. First off, there was the time... I was still running a little bit, and as I was pulling up to the 5k mark, I realized that I might actually be able to finish that part in less than 40 minutes! Granted, that's not that quick, but you have to remember that I haven't run in FIVE months. And I was tired. And it was cold. And windy. But I was doing well. And I hadn't seen anything yet.
Around the corner from the 5k mark we found our first ground-level view of the mighty St. Johns... and it whipped up like we were in a hurricane! In all my time in Jax (almost 2 1/2 years at this point), I've never seen anything like it. The waves were crashing over the retaining wall and spraying all over the road
The spray was going across the entire road, and people were crowding on the sidewalk just to keep from getting soaked! And then, while I stopped to take the picture above, I heard someone yelling "Billy!", and turned around to find my wife. Somehow, Lana found me in the herd of 12,000 runners!
But now it's getting late, so I'll finish this up tomorrow. Stay tuned for Part II.
No comments:
Post a Comment