Racing Again

Two weeks after my first road race, I decided to try another, this time 10K (6.2 miles) in the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run.  This time I also had a friend to race with, a coworker who used to run track and cross-country.   I had always wanted to do the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run, even before I knew how to run, since I would always see the race ending downtown and it just looked like a lot of fun.  I suppose that I could have done it before as a walker, but I'm so glad that I was able to run it this year, and it was so much fun doing it with a friend.  Unfortunately, because of road construction that was scheduled but never actually started, the race couldn't end downtown, so we started and finished at the new (yet to open) Skyline High School.  That was pretty fun in and of itself, since we got to poke around in a brand-new school building that looks like it is pretty much ready to go but hasn't yet held a class, but it would have been a lot more fun to finish downtown.  In any case, I think the main point of the race is to be able to run along Huron River Drive, which is usually not possible (or at least not safe) because there is no sidewalk, and we still got to do that.  The weather was also absolutely perfect -- a bit chilly when we started, and not at all too hot along the way.  Most of the course was pretty flat, with the notable exception of mile five to six, which was pretty much straight uphill and felt like it would never end, but there were a lot of spectators cheering us on by that point.  One of the funnest things about this race was that two parts of it were out-and-back, so we could see the really fast racers and cheer for them as they passed us going in the other direction.  The guy in the lead had absolutely no competition, and we cheered for him, and for the first woman, and also the first person pushing a stroller.  It was really nice having a friend to race with.  We talked most of the way, which made it go pretty quickly, and we could make decisions together about when to pass other people, which just made me feel a lot more confident.  He is faster than I am, which was good for me, since it encouraged me to run faster than I probably would have on my own.  He probably could have run even faster on his own, but kindly stayed with me, even at the final push.  In any case, we finished under my long-shot goal time of one hour (full results here), which totally made my day.  After our race, we finished stretching and eating just in time to watch the first of the 5K racers finish, and one of my former history students finished fifth!  Later on, I was quite sore, but it was completely worth it.