Start 2 Finish

Overland Park Kansas…..  Run on July 23, 2011

This race, got off to an uncomfortable start.  To begin with, I only got 3 hours sleep prior to the event.  Secondly, we are in a heat wave, so even at 7:00 A.M., it seemed like a scorcher running in the early morning sun.  And I love the heat, just not so much running at a fast pace when I don’t have to.  As is usual for me when I begin a race, I am like, “WHY, why am I doing this? I want to go home”.  And I want to run a half marathon? (13.1miles)  But, as I have each race thus far, I carry on.  This race began at Johnson County Community College (JUCO), and ended at The University of Kansas’ Edwards campus.  They call this race the Start 2 Finish, the ideal being; local residents can begin their studies at JUCO,
then finish at Edwards, a novel ideal, if you don’t mind being a Jayhawk.  As the race began, just running out of the JUCO lot, onto Quivira, was almost half a mile.  Then, once we entered the Edwards campus, it was near another half mile to the finish line.
But, the bulk of the race was the approximate 2.1 miles straight down Quivira Road, which connects the two campuses. I say straight, ha, that’s a laugh.  Kansas may be mostly flat in western Kansas, but it certainly didn’t feel that way running down Quivira Road. One would think that when you see the finish line in sight, you would kick it up, put your legs in top gear, but many times for me, as was today, by then, my energy is so zapped, “kicking it up” amounts to a slow craw.  This is an area I need to work on, storing energy for the finish.  I also need to find a way to shorten my run time by 3 minutes or so.  I hope to someday decrease that time even more. I’m not sure when I will run my next sanctioned 5K; maybe I will try a 10K on my next race. And, I am still shooting for a 13.1 in October, we shall see.