Crazylegs 2010

Today I ran the Crazylegs World race. It was supposed to have been on Saturday, but I as the local race director postponed my race from Saturday to Sunday due to inclement weather.

To let you know how bad it was, I’ll tell you what another local race did on Saturday. April 24 was the Music City Marathon and Half Marathon, which 32,000 people were registered for. It’s kind of a big deal here. Without much announcement or fanfare, officials started the race 15 minutes early for everyone, diverted some slower marathon runners to the half marathon course at mile 11-ish, and forced other slower marathoners to finish 5 or 6 miles before they would have actually completed the marathon.

Severe thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes were predicted (we endured the first but not the last two, thankfully), so the local Crazylegs race director (me :-) decided to postpone the race until Sunday. It was much better in that it was sunny, but the 10–15-mph headwinds and crosswinds made for a challenging out-and-back course (why does it seem like you never have a tailwind even when you do an out-and-back?). I also included a few hills in the route to simulate Observatory Hill.



Having delayed the race, I knew the times of some of my fiercest competitors, Team Hawaii Badgers, so my intent was to beat them. I didn’t know Grandpa Bob’s time (he ended up finishing in 1:05:53), but I thought maybe this was a race I could win, so I went out hard and pretended like my solo run was actually a race and I was competing for the win. I got strange looks from only a few people wondering what I was doing running alone with a bib number pinned to my shorts (one of my friends said it sounds like something Saturday Night Live would parody).

The start line

I had just witnessed the female winner of the Music City Marathon run 26.2 miles at a 5:49-ish pace. I stayed with her the entire marathon, cheering her on and trying to pace her; though I was on my bike and she on her two feet. If that wasn’t motivation, I don’t know what would be! Comparing my splits (5:00, 4:41, 4:54, 4:34, 4:50, 4:52, 4:49, 4:42) to her pace, one might wonder how I can’t win that race—until I tell you that mine were kilometer splits, not mile splits. Well, it looked promising for a minute! My total time for the 8 kilometers/4.97 miles was 38:26. I don’t know where that falls in the actual Crazylegs results, probably not as high as 17th in age, but it felt like a good little race for me. I only rue the fact that we couldn’t all run it together!

And, since it’s the Crazylegs race, I must complete this report with a picture of some crazy legs.

Crazy legs

I (first and) last did this race, the actual one, in April of 2006, and I ran that 8K in 42:11. This was an improvement of 3:45. Woohoo! Thankfully athlinks has that result, because according to the Crazylegs results website, 2006's race "Results Can Not Be Recovered. Sorry For Any Inconvenience."

I also spent a little time at Publix and found some great sales.

This was a good shopping trip: $90 worth of groceries for $30.03 total. The cereal alone would have cost $31.52 + tax! The candy is for work, bu the rest of the food I'll eat.