Texas State Stair Challenge

This was a two mile race put on by one of my friends from the Triathlon Club here at Texas State. It was a small race and ended up only having four runners, but it was one of the most unique and cool races that I've ever been a part of. The challenge of the race is that we would run down to the lowest elevation of campus which ended up being close to one mile, and then from there we had to run up every stair on campus to get back to where we started.

My friend Austin from Triathlon club was also running and he knew the course and is a bit faster than me so I followed him for the first mile downhill. We hit the mile at about 5:00 and after that it was all uphill from there (in a bad way). As soon as we started to climb the stairs I could feel the lactic acid in my legs starting to build up and it hurt bad. I slowed way down and just tried to keep a comfortable pace. Once I climbed all the stairs it was about a 200m run to the finish and I just ran it in at the same pace. I don't think I've ever been that close to cramping up so many times in one race, but I'm really glad I did it because it was a cool challenge and at least I finished it. My time ended up being about 13 minutes.

Seth, my friend that put on the race had gotten a ton of prizes and awards for the winners and because only four people showed up to run we ended up all getting something pretty cool and even all the volunteers got some cool stuff too. I ended up with a subway gift card and a couple of shirts so I couldn't be happier with how that race went. Seth raised a lot of money for our club and we all really appreciated how much work he put into the race. It was a lot of fun and if they have this race again next year I'll definitely be a part of it!

Alpha Delta Pi Ronald Run 5k

So I'm just now getting to write about my last 5k because I've been really busy now that we're getting close to the end of the semester and everything. Anyways I found out about this race through my friend Alex who's in the sorority. I figured it would just be a kind of unorganized non timed thing so I was hesitant at first to do it, but man am I ever glad I did. So I showed up on race morning expecting it to be cold but I found that it was also really rainy too, luckily it had slowed down quite a bit by the time the race started so I was more comfortable. I met a couple of nice guys that I figured looked competitive and we talked about our PR's and how many races we'd done so far. That was nice because it kind of gets my mind off of the race and I'm not as nervous.

So getting to the actual race, the gun goes off and our pacer is a sorority girl on a bike. She did an amazing job, but I always prefer to have a motor vehicle of some type because I start off really fast and usually don't know the course. I just went where I assumed the path went. I was wrong, but I'm sure this didn't cost me but a few seconds, after that I was right back to the front of the pack. The girl on the bike realized that I was right behind her and sped up a bit so that I could make my gap between me and the chase group as big as I could. I hit my first mile in about 5:30 which is a bit slower than I usually go out, but I figured this would be a tough course to PR on in the first place. At the moment I was more worried about just winning the race, I had a pretty big gap (maybe 40 seconds) on the group at this point so I calmed down and started running closer to 5:50 pace for the next mile or so. If anyone caught up to me and I had been running that pace I could at least kick at the end for about half a mile and catch them. That never ended up happening though. I was able to keep the gap pretty wide and ended up running a respectable 18:07. I didn't even care what my time was at that point though because I had just accomplished one of my most desired goals, I had finally WON a race. I can usually pull out first place in my age group and sometimes I'll get second or third overall, but I finally won a race and I felt amazing.

Overall this was a great experience and I'm really glad I took part in the race. I plan on showing up again next year and trying to defend my title! (wow I can finally say that). Anyways my next race is a huge 5k in Houston on Thanksgiving morning. Hopefully being back on the streets I know and train on, along with some tough competition, can push me under that 17:00 mark that I've been shooting for. Thanks for reading y'all. Have a good one.