Ran Yesterday's Tioga 10K Run for Haven Race

Tioga is a small community a few miles west of Gainesville.  They staged a 5K/10K race yesterday (March 14th) that drew a moderately small number of participants.  Seeing how nuts my home town of Gainesville is about running, I was a little surprised that there weren't more, but then I realized that Jacksonville was also holding its Gate River Run 10K the same day...the real hard-core fanatics probably went there instead.  My race started and ended at the Tioga Town Center, a sizable shopping center large in proportion to the surrounding population...I have gone to its Starbucks a number of times over the years.  At the start/finish  area is also a stage where Natalie Nicole Green, an emerging local country artist, performed before and after the race.  She sang very well and didn't confine her act to country and western, diplomatically choosing to include some rock songs (like Fleetwood Mac's Dreams) in her act.  There was also free food and drink (including beer) for the runners (not exactly "free"...you had to pay to run the race).  There were a lot of runners dressed in green (for St. Patricks Day)...I inadvertently wore my green Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon running shirt without thinking. The race started at 4:30 in the afternoon, which normally in the middle of March isn't so bad temperature-wise...except that we're currently in a mini-heatwave (for this time of year) and it had gotten up into the mid 80's.  And the humidity, officially at 57%, felt more like it was in the 70's to me...very, very muggy.  So I knew from the start that the race would present a  challenge...

When the race began, both the 5K and 10K runners set off together for about a mile through the residential subdivision behind the Town Center.  Then, at an intersection, the 5K-ers veered down a street to the right and stayed in that subdivision the duration of their 3.1-mile race, while we 10K runners headed on straight ahead down a dirt path...into the woods.  For more than three miles, we kept going down a maze of crisscrossing, curving, and sloping dirt pathways.  I completely lost my bearings out there and had only my watch to give me any semblance of distance covered. The dirt surface was bad, too, giving my shoes poor traction...in places it was like running on soft beach sand.  But the worst part was the heat and mugginess...and the refreshment stations set up along the way every mile or two only provided water, not Gatorade.  In this weather, not providing electrolyte replenishment was a big mistake on the organizers' part.  Although I struggled through the entirety of the run, and wondered when the trek through the woods would ever end, I did manage to keep up with the runners I was around...until one would stop running and just walk...and then the next...and the next.  As a matter of fact, I can't recall ever running any race, including half-marathons, in which such a high percentage of runners just flat-out had to stop running.  It became a mental struggle for me to keep going, in spite of all the mileage I've built up in practice.  But I kept pressing on, and as I drew near the finish line, I was running strong.  I finished with a time of 56:24, not my best in a 10K race by a long shot, but still better than my Turkey Trot time last Thanksgiving by 32 seconds.  As for my age group (55-59), I won it...of course, I was the only one in it!

I didn't know whether the race organizers were giving out awards for age group winners or not, and immediately after the race I didn't know how I did compared to others in my group, so I didn't linger around...getting back in my car and driving home after getting a couple of slices of "free" Dominos pizza. Besides, it had begun to rain...

Although this race was something of an ordeal due to the heat and humidity, it was refreshing to finally not be hopelessly boxed in by other runners for a good stretch of the race as I have had to endure in the previous few.  I imagine, though, that had I chosen to run the one in Jacksonville instead, I would have been boxed in that entire hopelessly overcrowded race!  Now my string of one race per month has been increased to five straight months.  I don't know exactly when or where my next race will be, but I think I'll make an effort to pick an EARLY MORNING one!