August 2011 (b)

Beat the Heat 5k Saturday August 6 Thonotosassa Fl

After my disastrous event the night before at Moss Park I decided to show up to this Beat the Heat to watch. They give out an overall trophy to the series winner with the best times from all 3 races. Normally this younger 14 yr old runner has won the past few years, but a new 13 yr old showed up to challenge him. They had beat each other once so whomever beat the other would get the overall trophy. Straight from the start off they went in a dead sprint separating themselves from everyone by the 1/10 mark. It was nice to watch the beginning of the race for once and helped me get over last night. As they came back I noticed the 13 yr old had the lead by about 4 steps. As they made their way to the finish line in an all out sprint the older one kept pulling closer and closer. At the line the younger one won by about half a step. Great finish for sure!

After watching that I decided to run the mile to see what I could since I had never ran a timed mile race. Even with the hilly mile and running the night before my body felt pretty good as I ran a 6:27. I was happy with that with all things considered. Would like to do another timed mile at some point on a flatter surface to see how low I could go. As stated before I will always put this fun, small, close to home event on my calendar!

Crab Crawl Saturday August 27 Port Charlotte Fl

From what I remember this was a well organized event where you started outside of the Pt Charlotte Stone Crabs baseball stadium doing an out and back with finishing inside the stadium on the field. I was looking forward to doing this and spending some time with the family at Shark Tooth beach afterwards, but news around midnight that one of the greatest men -my father has passed away. He had along long bout with Alzheimer and other illnesses. It was a blessing that God decided to finally take him home, but it is still a huge loss. He was a great example of what a man, husband, and Father should be. Our loss is Heaven's gain!

I ran with a heavy heart as I covered the 3.1 distance. I originally wanted to go all out sprinted as far as I could in honor of him, but the desire would not carry me. As I passed the 2 mile mark a runner in my age group passed me. Knowing that I had never beat him I decided to at least settle that score. I passed him with about a 1/4 to go and never looked back. I did run an all out sprint thinking of my dad as I entered the stadium with the memories of playing catch with him, coming to my ball games, going to watch the Braves playing and seeing my idol Hank Aaron hit a home run, and going to the inaugural game at Legends Field in Tampa where the Yankees hold spring training. Even that day I can see the Alzheimer showing up when he would ask about 20 minutes who was playing, but talk about how he watched the Yankees play when he was young with watching Mantle and others.I finished in 22:31. I was 16th overall but only 6th in my age group. Seems like allot of fast runners in my age group in the Bradenton, Sarasota, and Ft Myers area.

 Like I stated a nice event and would recommend, but would be hard for me to do again.