Race Recap: Goodyear 10k "Burn Rubber"

The Burn Rubber 10k/Half Marathon is the second race of the Rubber City Series. I wasn’t able to go to the first race in the series, so I had no idea what to expect. Being sick enough to take Amoxicillin this week, and noticing a decrease in my strength and pace, I was a bit nervous about running any race at all.

The race was scheduled at 6:30 AM, and the race-day communications suggested runners arrive before 5:30, when roads would start to close. I live less than fifteen minutes away, so I left my house at 5:00 and got there in plenty of time. . . sort of. I arrived at the ONLY OPEN ROAD to the parking lot around 5:15 and waited in a huge traffic jam to move less than a mile into the parking lot, where there were plenty of spaces, by the way. I didn’t even get into the lot until 5:40, which set off my grumpiness and irritability. I was lucky. Anyone who was behind me had an even longer wait, and checking the Facebook site for the race, I saw that traffic was backed up onto the expressway. This was definitely a fail on the part of the race director, but he made it right by delaying the start time by fifteen minutes and sending police out to the off-ramp to direct traffic. This is the inaugural year for the Burn Rubber, so I am willing to give this mistake a pass because I am certain it won’t be a problem next year.

I found my peeps from The Ohio Runners Network, and we took a cool picture in front of the start line.

Then I found Shelby in the corral, and we took a selfie.

The gun went off, and away we ran, only to stop abruptly to get around the pace car, a Goodyear race car that had stalled in front of the start line. It wasn’t funny at the time, but when I saw the video of the driver and race director trying to get it started, I laughed out loud. I can’t even imagine what words were coming out of the driver’s mouth as he kept trying to turn over the engine.

I went out fast in my first two miles, which seems to be my MO, but usually I feel great in the first two miles of a race, and I have to calm myself down. This time I was still going fast, but I felt awful; I could tell that I would be racing the struggle-bus the whole time, and I was grateful that I chose the 10k rather than the Half-Mary.

Want to know how I did? Want to see pictures? Click here to read the full post.

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