Wild Vine 5k

 The Wild Vine race at the Whitewater Center is one of my favorite races but not for the course. The coarse pretty much changes every year. No, I love doing this race because I love the logo that they put on the shirts. Keeps me coming back. 

With the cooler day of fall here, I was looking forward to a cool and crisp morning race. Yet, I found myself looking at an overcast threaten morning skies. In fact, I drove through some rain on the way to this race. 

I abandoned my singlet before heading to the starting line. It was this warm. I watched as the 1/2 marathoners headed off in their race. Then, we lined up for the 5k. Smokes, did those guys go out fast. At from my perspective, they went out fast. I felt like I had weights in my shoes. 

Once we hit the tricky trails, things evened out out. I was doing my best to run strong. I lost some on Carpet, and I overshot a turn coming off of Tower. Going up the fire-road one runner roared by me. I closed back up once we topped the hill and then made my move past him when we were back on South Main. 

From then, I ran as hard as I could. All of the recent memories of being caught at the finish line lingered rather largely in the back of my mind. I kept glancing over my shoulder. This time, however, I was not to be caught. 

I am rather happy with my 23:51 and 8th overall finish. 

Driving out the WWC, I felt bad the 1/2 marathoners. The rain had started to pour. At the point where I saw them they still had plenty to run. From the looks of it, those were going to be some very rain soaked muddy miles. 

The Cool Down Runner