Davis, being a UC town, has a reputation, along with Boulder, as being a bike crazy - er friendly, town, to the point of maybe being more than a little wacky about it. Which means that finding a parking space near downtown Davis is almost always problematic when school is in, which it still is since it wasn't Thanksgiving week on top of it all.
In addition, this 20something edition of the Turkey Trot would be unique in that it had never rained on a Turkey Trot before, and it *poured* on Friday night. When I got up to dress and head over to Davis, it had stopped raining and there were minor breaks in the clouds, but the weather radar showed spotty showers here and there... the hourly forecast claimed the real rain would hold off into the afternoon.
It was also colder than Apple Hill two weeks before. Temps in the lower 40s, damp, but the trick would be to not overdress - so you'd roast while running - but to put on enough that you wouldn't be freezing off any vital parts while waiting to start.
Anyway, I went ahead and put two loose wicking shirts on, and used the new "water resistant" Iowa Nike storm 1/4 zip pullover on top of it, with its very handy double sided zip-shut kangaroo pocket (threw my car key and ID+cash etc. in a ziplock bag in there when I got to Davis). ANYHOW, I was very surprised to find, once I got off I-80 (actually 113) and took Russell towards downtown/campus that I was able to park less than two blocks from the starting point. Of course, the bulk of people that do this race LIVE in Davis, and a lot of the racers are students, so you're not going to have a lot of cars pulling up. Still, this was the closest I've ever been able to park at any race that I've done, and my total is somewhere up near 40 events since 2004 at this point. In other words, way cool that I didn't have to walk far and I arrived relatively late (less than 40 minutes before the 5K start).
The baby stroller 5K went before we did. Looking at the start and the course, and previous year's registrations, I knew that this would not be a fast run because the streets are narrow and I wasn't going to get in the front, take off at warp speed and die after about 10 blocks and then go through the head messing up stage of having lots of people pass me, so I wedged myself into the front third of the start crush and resigned myself to probably losing at least a half-minute on my time weaving through the crowd vs. a cleaner start. That's one of the things I don't like about big 5Ks, if you want the psycho advantage of being with a group that's near your goal pace, its difficult to get lined up properly for that to happen (even with signs noting where pace groups should form in the start queue). For 10Ks on up, at least in anything that I've entered that has more than 1,000 runners, where you are in the queue really doesn't matter (at least as slow as I am) because with a 6.2 mile race there's plenty of distance for the runners to sort themselves out without it too negatively impacting your start time. For half-marathons on up, it really doesn't fucking matter at all if you're a 9:00 pace runner anyway.... you put yourself wherever you want to be in the scrum because after the first mile you're going to settle into your race pace and for the longer distances its not a puke-fest its a pacing exercise.
But hey, NOT having the strollers mixed in with us was great, because there were some walkers in the group and even though we started 20 minutes after they did, I caught a few of the strollers, which, while totally meaningless, was nice, because I really fucking hate getting passed by a baby stroller. Yes, you have to make some effort to push it, but having pushed my own kids around in one, especially if you spend the $$$ for a nice jogging stroller, the weight of the kid+their diaper bag/etc. will actually pull you along (unless you're pushing the thing uphill - but in a place like Davis, which is built in the middle of a former fruit orchard in the Valley and is flat as a pancake, there is very little uphill except on ped overpasses) and allows you to conserve energy because you can lean on the stroller as you run. Ergo, IMHO, pushing a stroller is a form of cheating. OTOH, I like to see people running in 5Ks and 10Ks with a stroller, because it means they're out getting exercise and letting their kid(s) get some fresh air at the same time. Its all good... except when you pass me. Then you suck, OK?
Since it decided to lightly rain on us before the start, and the wind kicked up a bit, the race organizers thought it'd be a wonderful idea to have some overtly peppy woman (who sounded rather young) that heads those bikini boot camp sort of workouts to urge us, through the PA system, to do various workout/warmup exercises. I was a wee bit grumpy and mumbled something about "taking that microphone away" which got a chuckle or two from other runners that were standing near me (it was decidedly more colorful than I just described it, in terms of what I actually said). She was telling us not to knock over fellow runners, I personally felt we should just pretend we were in a rugby scrum, grab someone's head and start biting them. That would have been cool.
So, we shuffled off at the start, and I put my head down and pretended that I actually have some kind of football ability (which I don't, but I regularly fantasize about it and man, did I kick ass, there were so many hapless tacklers and none of those bastards came even close to taking me down) and eventually got into a clear enough area that I started picking off slower runners. For some silly reason I run more efficiently with my head down without increasing my pace - I go forward more quickly, but its hard to run for very long semi-hunched over...
While I waited to start, I saw my fellow jazz bander from a zillion years ago - yes, Pam, who I played in jazz band with for three years in high school, lives in Davis - on the sides, said Hi, and she also was at the finish chute and yelled encouragement as I trudged by looking not too far off from The Dead Thing The Cat Just Brought In To Impress You - thanks for the props - her husband and son were running and I hope they all had a good race.
I ran another OK pace, I could tell, though, that my body was tired with this being my 3rd race three weekends in a row, although being not really in race shape - I don't honestly know if I'll get back to my 2007 form - I have been treating these races more like a hard workout than an actual race... we will see if I can actually get any better in the coming months, or if the ravages of the aging process have taken their toll. When I saw the finish chute with about a quarter mile left, and knew I would finish in my goal time (i.e. under 30:00) I let up a little more than I should have, but its all good. I've chopped two minutes off of my 5K time with maybe 4-6 weeks of semi serious training since September 1, and my Disneyland trip was in the middle of that and disrupted the training cycle... one of the harder core runners/salespeople at Fleet Feet on J Street has told me to not be too hard on myself on trying to come back from injury/layoff, just to keep doing the training runs ... the same advice my BFF Kent has told me.
I did have a little fun at the water stations, which looked to be entirely staffed by UC students, by complaining (with a smile) that beer would be a much better drink than water (and it really would) but, alas, they had no beer...
No more races until my return to Davis on 2/6/11... for the 10K Davis Stampede. And I threw caution to the wind, and assumed that my body will allow me to get ready for the Shamrock'n' Half Marathon here in March and registered... this early, you get a custom bib name and I went with "bird cult"...
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