RCU Charity Classic

My wife and I traveled out to Eau Claire for the RCU Charity Classic. Angela brought her friend Leiah Bowen from work. We came down for the 10K race. All three of us raced the 10K, with Angela and Leiah running together and finishing in 1:03:51.3 (they finished together in 265 and 266th place) out of 371 runners. Congrats to Leiah, as this was her first race. She was nervous leading up to it, but did wonderful and they both had a great time. I also did the 10K and finished in 40:55.2 (28th overall and 3rd in my age group for a 6:36 min/mile). I then got crazy and signed up for the 2 mile immediately after and finished in 12:20.4 (6:10 min/mile which was 19th overall out of 251 runners and 2nd in my age group). Let me tell you, the lunch at Manny's (a mexican restaurant) was well deserved. Check out the yellow and white runner's number badge on my shorts in the shot of me crossing the finish. That is cool since I was one of the select few to compete in both races. Two mile results are posted at http://www.rcu.org/news_and_education/charity_classic/2008_2mile_overall.pdf 10K results are posted at http://www.rcu.org/news_and_education/charity_classic/2008_10K_overall.pdf

Aquafest 10K. 6/10/08

The annual Aquafest 10K race came down to a matter of feet for me. Although it was not as fast a race for me compared to the previous years, I came within 1 second of third place in this race. I finished in 40:59 which was good enough for 4th place and first in my age group. I closed off a lot of the gap on the runner who finished 3rd place as I ran the remaining mile or so, but was not able to make up enough of the time. The photo was in the Rice Lake Chronotype newspaper and was taken by Dave Greschner.

Panther Pant 5K

The Panther Pant occured at the Cathedral School in Superior, Wisconsin. It was a 5K race. I took off fast at the beginning and tried to stay with the lead guy. One of the guys who finished just ahead of me at the end of the race yelled out to his teammate who actually won the race a quote which I love. He was trying to pump up his fellow teammate and he yelled out "Mike, don't worry about that guy. You've got him. He's nothing." What great sportsmanship. Well, Mike did win the race and my early start to the race spelled a slow finish for me and I ended up finishing 6th overall. My time was 19:36. Perhaps if I would have slowed the pace initially, the overall time would have been better, as I was over a minute slower than the Osceola Healthy Heart 5K I did in April.