Race #26

Had a nice trip to Huntington, WV for the West Virginia Hot Dog Festival and 5K Bun Run. I think this was my very first trip to West Virginia in fact I don't think I've ever even driven through the state!

Huntington is set in a valley so the course was very flat. There was a slight incline the first half mile or so and then it was flat and mildly down hill the rest of the way. I needed a course like this after a couple weeks of not really training. I came out real fast, too fast to be honest, posting an 8:34 first mile! I heard this guy behind me tell his partner, "we're on pace for 8:34 minute miles," looked up to see the mile marker, confirmed the time on my watch and said to myself "holy shit, this is crazy!" Unfortunately I couldn't keep up that pace for the remaining two miles and ended up with a 30:20 for a 7th out of 14 place finish in my division. There were some fast old ladies in my division, http://www.tristateracer.com/Results/2010/July/BunRun5K-AgeGroups.htm, the winner came in 10 minutes before me!!

I realized during this race that I have a bad problem with negative self talk. Instead of encouraging myself and taking that great start and building on it, I immediately started figuring how I could slow down and still post a sub 30 result. I also let myself walk for two blocks when I should have just slowed the pace down in order to catch my breath. I also didn't push hard enough for the last quarter mile.

I hung around Huntington for a couple hours after the race to enjoy the hot dog festival activities, http://www.wvhotdogfestival.com/. This was the sixth year of this festival and I suspect it will only get larger as time goes by as this was a lot of fun and had something for everyone. There was a Cruise-in, wrestling, pooch/owner look-a-like contest, pooch parade, Dachshund racing, hot dog eating contest and root beer chugging constest and lots of live music. The look-a-like contest was largely about how much the owner was willing to humiliate himself and how much paraphanalia the dog is willing to wear. Hands down the guy in the middle was the winner!

Now the little guy on the end was a story in himself. He had a classic mullet haircut that was just unbelieveable! I was standing in the crowd waiting for the pooch parade to start when he came by with his dad and as I was thinking - oh my god, what a mullet - a lady next to me actually verbalized my thoughts! I turned to her and started laughing and told her to check out the dad. Yup, matching cut in salt and pepper!!

The big event, of course, was the Dachshund Dash, $100 on the line for the fastest racer. Now a little bit of advice to anyone who wants to get into weiner-dog racing, get one with black fur. The black dogs consistently won their heats and seemed to have the most focus going down the course. There was one curly haired dog, appropriately named Blonde, that when put down at the start turned around and looked at her owner as if to say "What?? You want me to run down the street in this heat?? I don't think so." Needless to say, she wasn't in the finals! But check out the finals:

Sunday I did my long slow 5 mile run as the temperatures were cool enough to actually do an outside run. Unfortunately, the temperatures are back up today so it is back to the gym. My legs are a bit sore but I want to run Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week in preparation for my Hawaii run. I'm expecting some fast runners. I looked at last years results and in my division, 40 - 49, there were 36 finishers and I would have finished right in the middle with my WV time.

I've signed up for the Worlds Largest Corn Maze 5K in Illinois! I'm trying to figure out my race scheule for the last 12 months of this quest. Should be able to get it done without too much struggle, getting Alaska scheduled will be the hardest.