A 10k? Why not?
A mere two weeks after my first triathlon, I ran my first 10k... in the pitch dark, in the rain and cold, and loved every minute of it...
The Tuscaloosa Track Club puts on a run every year called the "Freaky Friday 10k" just before Halloween... The race starts at 10:pm and in keeping with the campy Halloween theme, you start and end at a graveyard... So I convince my buddy Chad to run with me... or run "it" and I'll be there... Chad's a pretty solid runner and had knocked off the Chicago Marathon a year or so earlier... I knew we'd see eachother exactly twice during the race: at the start, and at the finish... Turns out I was right...
What made the race interesting was not only the rain, but that the course was nothing but hills... oh, and half of it was on gravel... oh and they had no aid stations (even though they promoted they'd have one at the turnaround)... oh and... well you get the picture...
Anyway, I had never run a 10k, which is 6.2 miles.. hell, I had never run 5 miles... I was lucky to finish 4 in my training runs... "Screw it" I thought, "might as well"... (remember that accomplishment junkie? yeah, he rears his ugly head)... Anyway...
I run... and I hurt (as usual)... I held my same 2 goals for every race: finish and run the whole thing, but lemme tell ya, about a mile or two out, I was convinced that I was gonna have to walk... I kept pushing, knowing that Chad was already done and probably bitching because it was taking me so long (he rode with me and couldnt' leave til I was done)...
The best part of the entire race was just before the finish line... my friends Gentry, Matt, and Catherine had shown up after the start of the race to surprise Chad and I at the finish line... About 200 yards out, I hear "Is that Dave?", and Gentry trots next to me and hands me a cup of beer...
Best.Finish.Ever.
I finished with a time of 1:15:01, which is right at a 12:04 mi/avg... To say I was pleased is an understatement... It was yet another thing I could scratch off my bucket list...
That night though, I ran into Drs. David and Jen Jones, who both work at Alabama. They mentioned that they would be running the Mercedes Half Marathon in February and that I should "check it out"...
"Yeah right" I thought....
Or so I thought...
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