Woo hoo! This past weekend, I ran in the Junior Carlsbad Mile and the Carlsbad 5000. These are two of my favorite races because they are in my hometown, my teammates always run in it, too, and they have the best expo booths!
On Saturday, I ran in the 11 year old Mile race. This year was my 5th year in a row participating. I didn’t have a particular time goal in mind because I had experienced a bit of foot pain earlier in the week and wasn’t sure how it would go. I just wanted to have a good time and enjoy it. I felt pretty good and ended up with a new PR as well as my 4th win!
Afterwards, we watched the rest of our teammates race and some of us went to eat a huge pancake breakfast. Yum! Then we spent several hours at the expo getting new freebies and giveaways.
My buddy Connor, came over to my house afterwards and we had a blast playing dodge ball all afternoon. Ha ha! We always have a great time together, even at practices, too.
The next morning, I headed back to Carlsbad Village to run in the Carlsbad 5000 race. They had the music on super loud which I love. It always pumps me up.
This time I did set a goal. I wanted to get a new PR and break the 18:00 mark. My previous best 5K was 18:11 in Oceanside back in November. Everything went as it should have. I was well-warmed up and found a good spot at the starting line. We had about 8 minutes to go before the start time and I was just moving my feet, staying loose, when I looked down at my feet where my timing chip was. I took a closer look and saw that it wasn’t the timing chip. My mom, who had placed it on my shoe that morning, had mistakenly put the other side on and left the actual timing chip side at home!
I immediately ran to the side where my parents were standing and let them know the situation. With only 8 minutes to go, I didn’t know how this could be resolved but I tried to stay calm. My mom looked everywhere for a race official to see if they might have a spare chip. Of course, no one had one. But she found a very nice lady who got on her radio and called back to the registration booth to see if someone could run a new timing chip and bib over. She hung up and said they were on their way. By now we had only 3 minutes.
We had no idea if the new chip would make it on time so we talked about the options in case it didn’t. Did I want to wait for the chip and then run in a later corral after the gun, or did I want to start with the first corral without a chip and not get an official time? I told my mom that I wanted to run without the chip. Either way, I was going to time my race on my watch and it would be very close to the gun time. I was good with that decision. (Deep breath.)
At this point a lady began to sing the national anthem. I knew that as soon as she finished, the gun was likely to go off. All of a sudden, we spotted a race volunteer running toward us waving a bib. My mom immediately grabbed the chip and within seconds had it on my shoe. I was thrilled! But then we were told we had to also switch bibs. So we fumbled trying to get all four pins off and repin the new bib on. I could hear her singing and she seemed to be singing faster than any other person I’d ever heard. You know how sometimes they really draw out the song? This woman was NOT. As my mom was pinning the last pin, I heard, “..and the hommmmmmeeee of the braaaaaaaaave….”
Wow. We made it. I immediately cleared my head, got back to the line and took off. Yeah!!
It was a really tough race for me. I took too fast of a start and ran a 5:25 first mile. That’s only 5 seconds slower than my mile race the day before. So I slowed up a bit in the second mile to a 5:55 pace. Yikes, too slow. In the final mile, I picked it up in order to hopefully reach my goal. I managed to do it and ended up running a 17:56. Whew! Tough run, but always fun. I was really happy with the result. Sometimes unforeseen things happen where there’s nothing you can do. I was prepared to still run a great race with or without my timing chip. It was helpful to remain calm and just go with the flow 🙂
Some photos after the race:
