Alison J. Murphy 5K 2013

This year’s Alison J. Murphy 5k was fun, but kinda lonely. Running tends to be a lonely sport, for me anyway, but this race I haven’t seen any runners I know. I looks like a light turnout, and the one person I usually hang with before and after running is on a 3 week trip to Italy.
I ran it in about 23:38 according to the clock at the finish. I got here with plenty of time, and so almost forgot to put on my bandana, and worse, my number. I found my iPhone arm band recently, and I gave it a try for this race. Not again, as it is too hard for my eyes to see it that close, and worse, too hard to press the right places on the screen when I’m running. I was ready for the race start, but repeated attempts, while I was starting to run, to press the start activity button in RunKeeper failed. Frustrating. I ran a bit with no music, then gave up and pulled my iPhone out and carried it in my hand, which made it much easier to start my tracking, though late.
I also had some trouble putting it in at one point, as my Zagg screen protector got caught on the clear plastic front of the case and started to lift off. Grrr. Oh, and a note for next time. Figure out how to reset the playlist. I had tested starting the activity from the case early, and then a few minutes later I put my head phones on and found the music still playing, even though I had stopped the activity. So I stopped the music, only to find it started at the same place in the play list when I finally got runkeeper activity started during the race.
As usual, they had some delicious apples donated by a local farm. Honey crisps this year, and they were crisp and tasty. I hung around until the official results were posted, to find my official time was 23:35, which is about 7:36 per mile. Not bad, considering my non race running has been closer to 9 minute miles. In my age group, I came in fourth, by 30 seconds, but I doubt I could have beat number 3. Seems the local 50-60 age group is strong, as the person who finished 1st in my age group also won the race. I came in 22nd overall. Next time I’ll pay attention to how many total ran the race. 🙂