“Sometimes the shortest races are the hardest,” to paraphrase my friend Nick. This is often true since one tends to run faster when the race distance is shorter.
&title=Fort Collins Fort Collins 5k "Trees at the CSU oval in Fort Collins. (Photo: Colorado State University)")
“Hey, there’s a 5k race this weekend,” I said to my buddy Nick. “Something about benefiting the volunteer firemen departments of Fort Collins. And it’s free!”
What a concept, a zero-cost race! Heck, even the Fort Collins Running Club’s Tortoise & Hare races aren’t free, although at $5 (for members) they are practically so since they include breakfast at Gib’s Bagels afterwards. Continue reading »
You would think that I’d run faster if I had people running after me like ax murderers, but in running races, I’ve seemed to have done better being the chaser than the chasee. At least the last time I had people start right after me in the fastest-people-go-last starts of the Tortoise & Hare Series of races put on by the Fort Collins Running Club, I was promptly caught and left for dead after just one mile. Continue reading »
By 8:00 am the morning was already brightly lit, but it seemed like several of us at the Warren Park 5k had dim hopes for running a good race today.
“I have no confidence about running on this winter day,” proclaimed Alex, who is often the Male Hare (fastest guy) in the Fort Collins Running Club’s Tortoise & Hare Series, of which this race was a part of. Continue reading »
“At least it is not as cold as last year,” a Fort Collins Running Club member remarked as a bunch of us were bouncing up and down as we waited for our turn to cross the start line of the race.
She had a point. It was -1 degree then, and Doug had icicles growing on his beard. Today was actually set to be a nice day, with the sun glowing strongly and the ambient temperatures being comfortable by the late morning. But that did little to mollify the fact that we were out here racing at 8:00am, when temperatures were still cold enough to freeze a pig. Continue reading »
“This will be another data point,” I wrote to a friend a couple of weeks before the race, “to see how much slower I get by not running for three weeks.”
My last race was the Eldora Park 8k, which I had concluded that I did not get significantly slower by not training during the three weeks before that. In between that race and this morning’s Fort Collins Thanksgiving Run, I had run exactly three times in 18 days, which constitutes “not training” in my book — especially when two of those runs were 2.5 miles long. Continue reading »
