2008 Syracuse Festival of Races: 5K

I don't know about anyone else, but I always wake up with my mind on fire.

Don't forget your towel. Recheck your bag for your jersey. Remember you packed food the night before. It's in the fridge. Should you have woken up earlier? Syracuse is 2 hours away. What if you get lost?

I read somewhere that one strategy for clearing the mind is to picture your thoughts being captured in balloons and then floating away. I spontaneously think of balloons popping and thoughts splashing back down in the puddle of my mind.

My car starts up like me, a roaring burst of energy. I wait for the RPMs to dip before pulling out of the garage. It's 6 am. I'm sorry if I woke my roommate, or my neighbors.

The days are noticeably shorter. The temperature is perfect for running. The darkness is not, but it will be nice to be one of the first to greet the day as I head down 90, straight into the East. The sky is what they call "mostly cloudy". Some openings appear. They look like lakes high up the side of this massive imposing mountain. I spend a lot of time thinking of an elegant way to describe this, but nothing comes to me. I so desperately want to be a writer. No. I am a writer. I so desperately want to be able to make a living off writing.

Eventually, modestly loud noise becomes tolerable and I discover K rock. Successfully finding a great radio station with the seek button is like winning a small lottery jackpot. Nothing goes wrong on the drive in and I beat google maps' estimate by over ten minutes (without speeding).

Before 8 am on a Sunday I step out into a full parking lot. On Monday, this will be asphalt again, but today it is hallowed ground. I can feel it. A handful of people wearing the typical dress of my cult jog about. At the registration tent I'm greeted by a handful of GVHers. A year ago I didn't know any of these people. Then I run into Jordan Davis. We've met once before, at the Jenny Kuzma 5k in Bergen. Of course we warm up together, and cool down, and he gets me into the Syracuse U locker room so I can take a shower afterwards. I share the little I have. I warn him about Jeff Eggleston, tell him what I know about the lucrative Hospice race in Rochester. Free favors, just because we're friends. You know, friends who met once before... it doesn't hurt that he is in the cult too.

The course is a flat, simple, out-and-back. A dashed tangent line is painted on the road. There is one hill at the beginning, and therefore at the end as well. The start of the race begins up hill, but it's the start so no one notices. The finish is downhill after a short up that you have to gut your way through. It's not so bad. The downhill makes the course seem a few hundred meters short because you can coast through the finish, assuming no one is bearing down on your ass.

On the starting line, I feel ok. Not great. I've been running for six days and two of those days were workouts. Before that I took a week and a half off. No running. No nothing. I had a tooth pulled, and yes, it did force me to not run that entire time. A week and a half shouldn't destroy my fitness in theory. I kept telling anyone who cared to listen that I just needed to get my rhythm back and I would be fine, like repeating it would make it true.

The blat of an air horn sends us on our way. Jordan's distinctive curly ponytail launches to the front. A small handful of other runners get in line ahead of me. The start was polite from my vantage point, no mosh pit of sharp elbows.

The race rolls smoothly. I draft a little, perhaps needlessly. The conditions are perfect; barely a breeze, but the cool air whisks away my body heat just as I produce it. There's a big guy up with leaders. Some people have naturally broad shoulders, but this isn't Ben Schmeckpepper, this guy seems awfully bulky. I wait for him to drop like a rock. He ends up floating back in a very controlled way. He just got caught up in the eddy of excitement that is the start. I pass him. He goes on to be the masters champion. The variety of successful running body types astounds me.

I burn one kilometer in 2:50, a few paces back from the leaders. My mind, typically loathe to engage in mental math, blurts out that this is on pace for a 14:10 5k. That's faster than my track PR. I explore my physiology and find an optimal alignment of body systems. I settle in, which may not carry the right connotation. It's the difference between rain water settling in the ocean or rain water settling in a divet at the top of a mountain. The energy levels of those two droplets are completely different.

I knock down one mile in 4:40. I had planned to hit it in 4:45. Not bad. No problem. Damn I love 5k. It's so short! I'm in no man's land, but it's no problem. I've got this tangent line at my feet. I'm going to hug her all the way home.

By 3K the mental games had begun. Just make it to 4k. So soon. So soon. 4K. Just get up this last hill, then it's all downhill from there. And so it was. I kicked down the hill and finished the way I ran most of the race, with no one near me. I placed 4th, one second off of my seed and goal time: 14:51.

All Results

Overrall men's results

Race home page

Race news article

Photos though apparently they were last updated in 2004

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