Last weekend Jen and I ran a road race in Marshall, MN (see photo); it’s a 10k run that we did last year as well. My latest preoccupation has been running road races…seeing if I can either get first or second in my age division in these smaller races that are at least an hour from Minneapolis-St. Paul. As a general rule, the further you get from the big city, the less stiff the competition is.

This morning my dad and I ran an 8K race in Janesville, MN. I lucked out and managed to get 1st in my 30-39 age division there. (My dad got 2nd in his age division. Nice job, Dad!) Though I’m not running as fast as I did in college, my pace seems to be good enough to place. In the Marshall race, I got second in my age division…and so did Jen. Earlier in the spring I won the Fountain Lake Five here in Albert Lea, but only because the folks who beat me last year weren’t there this year.

Anyway, all that said. As far as running goes, about the only things I’ve got going for me are my skinniness and my determination. When I started running in jr. high I was slowest on the team…and when I moved up to high school my freshman year, my coach would sometimes make me run with the girls because I was still mighty slow…for a guy. Over time, however, after dying nearly every day of cross country practice, I started to get better. Eventually I went on to run as a mediocre runner at Luther College; 25th man on a team of about 50. Only in the last couple years have I started to get back into racing. It’s so much fun.

I’ve been consistently running at about 6:36 pace per mile for 8k’s and 10k’s…without having done a huge amount of training. I’d like to see if I can get closer to 6:20 pace, however. My fastest mile pace for the 10k in college was about 5:40…so I’m a little ways off from that, but we did a TON of training in college…so I can’t expect to reach that pace given my current regimen.