Andrew Schrauben

My first race of the season is complete! This morning I ran the Heart and Sole 5K, finishing in 22:44. That time was good for 6/13 in my age group and 33/160 overall. Not bad, but I was hoping to finish under 22 minutes. I never really got into the groove during the race - I just felt slow and unable to speed up. Part of the problem was the trace amount of snow on the road - not enough to risk falling but enough to reduce traction a bit. Oh well - I'm planning to run another race in about a month and hopefully the weather will be warmer! It was 15 degrees for today's race.

The race runs part way around Reeds Lake in East Grand Rapids; you can find a rough map of the race course here (I say "rough" because I don't know exactly where the start/finish line was). The entire route runs along blocked-off residential roads with a few mild hills.

Amanda and I arrived plenty early and I warmed up a bit by running the first part of the course. I saw that Roger Bonga was there... Roger is a local endurance athlete who I met at the Cascade Winery where he works. He's a very nice guy and a very fast runner. I ran part of my warm up jog with him and he told me that he was planning to "run it easy" and finish in about 20 minutes - I wish I could run "easy" at that pace!


Ready set go! Enjoying the first few seconds of the race.

The race organizers were very no-nonsense. We got a "5 minutes to start!" warning, and the next thing we heard was "10 seconds!" No speeches, no instructions, nothing. At the starting line I placed myself among the middle of the pack but once we got going, I quickly passed a few dozen people. However, it took forever to feel settled at the pace I wanted; usually after a couple minutes I'm locked in and cruising, but today my stride didn't smooth out until around seven minutes into the race.

Occasionally running among us were local residents simply out for a morning jog. Aside from the finish line, there were two spectators and three volunteers out on the course. Unfortunately there really aren't any good highlights to this race.

Around 12 minutes along I starting feeling pretty good, but at around 15 minutes I felt totally dead. Luckily that only lasted a minute or so and after that I was just "race tired". I pushed hard for the last mile but it just didn't feel like I could accelerate. You can see how hard I was working in the photo as I approach the finish, and also how worn out I looked immediately afterwards. However, within 15 minutes I was feeling recovered! Apparently I didn't run fast enough...


Almost there! Pushing hard down the final stretch to the finish... and not smiling.

Sadly, when I finished there was nobody nearby that I could chase to the tape - I love sprinting out a contested finish but the nearest competitors were about 25 yards ahead and behind me. Speaking of my competitiveness, only two women finished ahead of me! :)


Recovering just after the finish... whew!

Race headquarters was at the nearby high school and I used the locker room there to change into street clothes since Amanda and I had to head directly to the Grand Rapids Museum for an adoption event, helping out Vicky's Pet Connection. Our foster dog Joyce was there along with two others. I'll leave it to Amanda to tell that story.