Mission Inn Musings

Some tidbits left over from the Mission Inn Run...

Where Are The Pictures?

I didn't actually take any pictures myself at the run. Sadly, Mrs. LB and the girls had a prior commitment and weren't able to attend, so nobody greeted me at the finish except volunteers. As I went to the race myself, I couldn't really take a camera.

Funny thing is, I ran into Yvie's teacher at the race. I volunteer in her class a lot so she knew me and we exchanged a brief hello as her husband had just finished the 10K himself (I don't know yet if I beat his time or not). I suppose I could have asked her to take a picture of me.

But there is one picture floating around of me in my awesome pink Loper shirt. You'll have to click here to see it. Angie of Angie Eats Peace had her camera and her husband took this picture.

The other person in that picture is Art, one of my Loper pace leaders. He had run the half marathon with a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes. Funny thing is Art had run 20 miles in 3 hours 40 minutes the day before the half marathon. He's run a total of 52 marathons, and will run number 53 next month in Las Vegas. He's 58 years old.

Yes, I am in awe.

Picking The Pics

Now, there will be some pictures of me I believe. There were photographers along the course and it was a real strange coincidence that when I came upon them I was right in their way, like weird. I was running and the photographer was in front of me and there wasn't anybody or anything between me and the photographer.

Strange how that worked out.

Anyway, hopefully there will be some action pictures of me. And hopefully I won't look like I was suffering too much.

Claim Your Medal, LB

One of my readers (JM) commented on my Mission Inn Run race recap about the medal and wanted to know how much faster would I have needed to run in order to have gotten a medal. It was actually a great question and really got me thinking.

To answer her question, I would have needed to run about six seconds faster as the 100th male finished in 50:19. My time officially was 50:24. It was attainable and will be attainable for me the next time I run it.

I started thinking about this, about earning a medal. I've received medals before. Actually, my first race, my 5K back in '08, I got a medal for and I figured that every race would be like that, that you'd get participation medals in all races no matter what. Of course, it's not like that.

The longer races seem to have participation medals as I got one for the Run Through Redlands Half-Marathon and the Ragnar Relay, and will get one for Surf City.

But while those medals are great and treasured, I didn't really earn them. Now, you could say that by signing up and running the race I earned them and while I won't argue that, I will say that I haven't earned one by finishing in a certain time or place. Again, I'm not so concerned with time and competing against others, but I suppose in some ways it would be nice to earn a medal this way, to finish in the top whatever of a race and get a medal that others didn't.

Still, I'm not going to fret over that but it is something that I hadn't thought about before. We'll see if it comes back into mind the next time I run a 10K.

Pace Yourself

I wound up running the 10K with an overall pace of 8:06, which is pretty good for me. I had run the 10K a year ago at about 8:30. Shaving seven seconds and finishing the 10K with a pace of 7:59 would translate into finishing in 49:53, which would be fantastic, but it's a challenge.

Still, I think I can get there. I just need to run more tempo runs and more intervals as I hadn't been running many of these lately, well, not as many as I would have liked.