Diana and I before the race. Diana ready for the half and me for the 5K
Either I didn’t pay enough attention when I was signing up or they changed the day on me… mostly I didn’t pay attention. I wrote down Saturday, April 23. I even created an event for April 23 on Facebook. This past week, I got an email saying the marathon and ½ marathon would start at 7 and the 5K at 7:10 and the only mention of anything on Saturday was the Kids run and the Expo. I started to dig deeper and realized that the 5K was on Sunday at 7:10. Good thing I didn’t have plans that early on Sunday. The hubby wanted to do know who I was doing it with so he could just pick me up on his way to Fond du Lac. Then I informed him that the race was at 7:10 and I’d be home by 9 at the very latest. We didn’t have to leave until 10 anyways. I wasn’t sitting around Oshkosh for 2-3 hours post-race all sweaty and gross, then sit through softball and dinner the same way.
I really enjoy running the Cell Com and the Fox Cities. They make the 5K special. You get a medal just like the marathon finishers. You have a fairly decent feast afterwards. No one is driving on the roads you are running on nor do you have to worry about cross traffic. I felt like the 5K is an afterthought to the Marathon/Half Marathon in Oshkosh.
The Start of the Marathon
Everything is all about the Marathon/Half Marathon runners. They get medals, the post-race feast is mediocre at best. The finish line is a bunch of cones. Okay so the marathon/half marathon finishers get the same finish line and food but I feel for a marathon/half marathon more effort should be put into the whole event. There were even leads on bicycles. I want someone to lead us on a bicycle. At times we had traffic going in the opposite direction. At one intersection, the cop had to direct traffic since they allowed cross traffic. If you don’t want to shut down the downtown for several hours, move the race.
Water Station (photo courtesy of Dutrirun Facebook Page)
The best part of the course was running past the Alpha Xi House at UW-O. I’ve been trying to find it for years and the one time I do, it’s 7:15 on a Sunday morning and I’ve got a race to run.
The t-shirt we got is actually very nice even if the tags were still on it. However, there was 1 shirt for all the divisions unlike the other races where the 5K has it's own shirt.
The best part: Finishing in under 41 minutes… 40:20 to be exact. That is a personal best for me. My next goal is to break 40 minutes. I might have done it too if I didn’t try to sprint the last .1 mile and jogged it. I ended up walking part of the finish because I went too fast.
Will I do the Oshkosh 5k again? Maybe. If it is early on a Sunday morning, probably not. If it is moved to a reasonable time, I might consider it. I didn’t like getting up before my alarm normally goes off during the week to go run a 5K that luckily wasn’t in the rain. Maybe it’s Oshkosh. Maybe I just have a high standards after the Cell Com and Fox Cities. Maybe I was cranky it was so early on a Sunday. Who knows but I wasn’t impressed.
No comments:
Post a Comment