Street Light 5k – Concord, NC Recap
So after racing on Monday night at the
Fire Cracker 5k in South Charlotte, I spent pretty much the rest of
the week laying around. Thursday morning while browsing through a
list of local races, the Street Light 5k caught my eye. Wild, that's
tomorrow night. I was thinking that the race was next week.
Why not go race.
Fast forward to Friday evening, I
headed toward downtown Concord.
The weather was typical for July. The
temperature was in the mid 90s but it feels like 100 degrees. Throw
in some oppressive humidity and not much wind and you have the making
for a tough race – even for a 5k.
The Street Light race follows the same
course as the Bunny Run 5k earlier this year. The first mile is fast,
the second mile is pretty much flat along the green way, but the 3rd
mile is the beast. In this mile, the course slowly climbs back up to
downtown Concord. Along the way, we have a nasty set of switch backs
just to make a runner's life totally miserable.
So I am finishing my warm up strides when I ran in to Brittney. If memory services me correctly, I hadn't
seen her in a couple years. Not since, she was a senior in high
school. She has moved up now. She runs for the UNCC 49ers XC team,
and she brought a few of her buddies along with her to this race. Oh,
they are going to make life interesting. I am sure of it.
As with most starts, the young guys go
out pretty hard. In this case, this didn't do them much good. We
round the first corner, and they suddenly break right and head down a
side street.
There must have been a surprised look
on my face because I didn't remember doing this any of my previous races
here.
Suddenly, people were yelling for them
to turn around. Having not made their mistake, I found myself in the
front of the field.
We made it through the first mile in
5:33. Brittney, and her buddies were right behind me. By two miles,
Brittney moved ahead of me, and her two buddies followed.
That last mile, the monkey was truly
jumping on my back. My legs felt wasted climbing up the hill.
Brittney put some 40 seconds on my during the last mile.
What a difference a couple of years
make. She has become a stronger runner, and the training showed as
she charged up the last hill.
Big Kudos to her and here 49er running
buddies.
As for me, I went on to finish 4
overall and was the first male finisher in 18:56.
To wrap up this post, I want to send
the Concord Park & Rec Dept a huge shout out for a job well done.
I run numerous races during the year so I see the extremes both good
and bad for how races are run. Those guys do a awesome job, and to
beat it, they only charged $20 race day registration. That's why I
believe in giving credit where credit is due. They deserve it. Job
well done guys!!!!
The Cool Down Runner
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