Had some misgivings about going up there because my knee is not feeling wonderful and the weather forecast was for rain. But I figured if I didn't go to this one, at a reasonable hour in a county I could somewhat easily drive to (thus low-hanging fruit, in other words), than I might as well give up on the entire project.
Ok, Darke County, what I remember from the Wikipedia entry: only about 52,000 people in entire county (that's about what my town in New Jersey had when I was growing up). Most famous person from there/born there was Annie Oakley. New Madison has fewer than 900 residents. The most famous people from there are Clayton Murphy and some race car driver I never heard of before.
But I have heard of Clayton Murphy. He won a bronze medal in the Olympic 800 meter race in 2016. Prior to that, he ran for the University of Akron and made the World Championship team in the 800 when Nick Symmonds skipped the race over a dispute with USATF about wearing sponsor logo attire outside of the competition. After the Olympics, Murphy left school and turned pro. He started training with the Nike Oregon Project/Alberto Salazar, and since then, things have not gone so well for him. he tried to pull off the 800/1500 meter double at the USA trials last year, and ended up injured so he didn't make it to Worlds. And his results since then have not been so hot, either. Did he compete at the US Indoor Trials this year? I can't remember but I know he didn't make the team.
I had a Saturday morning free and I thought I could drive up to this race and cross Darke County off the list.
Last year was apparently the first year for this race. There was only one woman in my age group last year, and it took her almost an hour to finish, so the chance of an age group award looked good, especially since they said they were going three deep. Hardware is always a bonus. The web site had a list of registered runners, which I checked Friday night, and there were two other women besides myself in my age group this year, but only 42 people preregistered. With the predicted bad weather, they weren't likely to get many more.
I left my house around 6:30 am and arrived at the Tri-Village High School (staging area for the race) a little after 8 am. It weirded me out a little to drive up to what was for me this strange, new place. I passed through Eaton, where I have been several times for a dog show, and I still had miles and miles of driving to do.
It was raining off and on during the drive up there, and I had time to go through various emotional states. When I left my house, I was feeling great. My knee was not bothering me, and I was excited about getting started on this project. While I was driving through familiar territory, I was thinking about how much I love racing, and how a little, local 5k race is one of my favorite things in the world to do. But then when the rain started and especially after I left behind the places I knew, I began to feel completely differently about it, thinking about how stupid the whole idea was, and how miserable it was going to be to run in the rain with a bunch of strangers.
I found the school, and after a bit of circling around, figured out how to get into the parking lot. I was not the first one to arrive, and I had the impression that there were many potential age group competitors, all looking much fitter than me.
The race started and finished on the high school track, and the packet pickup was in the concession area. It appeared that they had special gifts for the people who had done the race last year, as if they were going to establish some sort of a "streakers" program. I got my packet, which was a yellow reusable grocery bag with a nice water bottle and some flyers for local businesses inside. We had timing chips to attach to our shoes, but no race bibs. I went back to the concession area to double check on this, because I have never done a race before where we didn't get a race bib. I'm not sure if this is really high-tech or what. If your electronic timing system fails, don't you want your runners wearing bibs to help you with your backup plans? But for fifty people maybe it is not such a big deal!
The rain had let up a little, and I was hoping it would hold off at least until I was almost done with the race. It was a little chillier than I expected, what with the rain and the wind, so I was glad I had brought along a long-sleeved technical top. I didn't take a selfie, but for the record, I was wearing black capris with green trim, a technical top from the Eugene Marathon (with the Tracktown USA logo on the back), and my water repellant hat from the Delaware Marathon. To this I now added a long sleeved tee from the Ashenfelter 8k.
I debated doing a warmup, and finally decided that it wasn't raining that hard, and I was bored, and it wouldn't hurt to feel out the knee situation. So I jogged a little bit around the parking lot and in front of the school on the sidewalk. I did not see anybody else doing a warmup. I felt silly but there I was. The pavement was a little slippery because of the rain, and I cursed the damn Nike shoes, which have many great qualities but traction on slippery pavement is not among them.
Some official race announcer/director dude thanked everyone for coming, and explained that Clayton could not be there this year because he was busy training for some important spring races. Well, I don't know about that. It's a non-championship year, so there's just the USAs and Diamond Leagues coming up this summer, and based on how Clayton's winter went, things haven't been looking so good. So hopefully he is actually busy training and gets it figured out. I don't know why he couldn't take a weekend to travel home to visit family and friends and appear at this race that is run in his honor at a school where they have named the track after him. But I don't know his personal situation, and maybe a trip home is not desirable to him. Still, it occurs to me that there are other professional runners who do give more freely of their time.
I guess I am inclined to think somewhat negatively and skeptically about Clayton Murphy, since he has joined the somewhat suspicious Nike Oregon Project, with the cloud that lingers over Alberto Salazar and the athletes who train with him. Hopefully they don't someday have to rename this track because Clayton Murphy gets busted for doping. Time will tell.
I overheard a young woman discussing the course with her family and friends. They asked her what time she was going to finish in and she said around 30 minutes, so I decided to line up right behind her. I would like to think that I could be faster than that but with the knee in such rough shape it was't advisable to try. And honestly I haven't gone faster than that in many months.
So I lined up in the middle of the "pack" (if you can call 50 people a pack) and told that woman and her friend that they looked like they knew where they were going so I was just going to follow them. She said the course was pretty straightforward, just out the gate and through the town and then an out and back on a long stretch of road. But it disturbed me some that people weren't wearing bibs, because how can you tell who is in the race and who is just out for a run if they aren't wearing a bib?
It took me a few seconds to cross the start line, and soon we were in fact off the track and onto the street. I wondered how long I was going to need my long-sleeved shirt, but for the moment I was glad to have it on. I was hanging just behind the two young women from the start line. I thought they were a bit overdressed. The other woman, not the one I had talked to, was wearing a fleece vest over a long-sleeved shirt. As we moved down the road, I was having more trouble keeping up with them, and I wondered if I was going out too fast.
I hit the first mile in around 9 minutes (more like 8:55 to the mile marker) and somewhere in here I actually passed these women for the first time. I took a little walking break up one of the hills, and they passed me back, but they were slowing down. I took my shirt off, which felt good. It had started bothering me around the half mile point but I didn't want to stop to remove it until I was taking a walk break.
I started seeing runners on their way back, and wondered how they could really be the race leaders, since none of them were moving especially fast. In fact, nobody in this race broke 20 minutes! This may have overall been the slowest race field I have ever participated in. It's weird, because this could be a reasonably fast course. There were some little rollers but also plenty of flat. No shade though, so it would be tough on a hot day from that standpoint. But that was not an issue on this day.
The woman's leader appeared to be a little girl. Generally I start counting the women who go by on an out and back course to see how many are ahead of me but I didnt bother this time.
There was a water table at the halfway turnaround, and I grabbed a cup even though I didn't really need it because of the rain. Mostly it was just an excuse for me to take a little break. Now we were running into the wind, which was sort of miserable, especially as it started gradually raining harder.
Mile 2 was a 9:42. I was slowing down, and perhaps I had gone out too fast at the beginning. But so had the two women who had been right in front of me, and at some point I left them behind for good. The road back to the school was hillier than I remembered from the way out. Funny how that happens. Mile 3 was a 9:44, and I almost missed the gate to turn back on to the track, but a guy who was running along side me pointed it out in time.
I had to push to break 30 minutes, but my final time was 29:48. I started to get cold almost as soon as I crossed the finish line, so I put my long sleeved top back on, and headed to my car to get my bag with dry clothes. When I walked back up to the start/finish area, I noticed a video screen scrolling the results, and discovered that I had finished as 4th overall woman, and won my age group. So I decided I might as well stay around for the awards.
I changed into dry clothes in the bathroom and headed back outside. Nice clean bathrooms, BTW, and no lines at this tiny race, so kudos for that!People were all huddled together under a couple of pop-up tents. I had my umbrella, so I hung around outside. Some people were eating bananas and orange slices, but I couldn't figure out where to get them, and the people I tried to ask about it just ignored me. So I ate the Picky Bar I had packed and drank from my water bottle. Overall I felt like the people at this event were not especially friendly, but perhaps it was because it was such a small race and I was there as a true outsider.
Finally they began to announce the awards, and they gave out medals to the top three overall men and women. Then they said that since there were so few runners, everybody would get a medal, so just stop by the concession area and pick one up before you leave. So that was a little anti-climactic, but at least it meant I didn't have to sit through a long awards ceremony to get my bling. If I had run just a teensy bit faster, I actually could have beaten the woman who was third overall, but that's okay. Whatever.
The drive home seemed longer than the drive there! Maybe because it was raining harder much of the way. My knee doesn't feel so great a day later, but I guess I'm glad I did this little race and got started on the project. I wonder how much longer this event will continue. It has the potential to be a more popular event, although the staging area is not set up to accommodate a huge crowd, so they might have to adjust things if they drew more people. But it was reasonably well organized, and as small town races go, I would recommend it.
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