The Great Turtle Race

No I'm not talking about myself. Sometimes I feel as slow as a turtle though. The name of the race on Mackinac Island is The Great Turtle Race. Apparently the island resembles a turtle. I've been training for this race for a while now and I just didn't feel myself getting faster so I was worried. My original goal was to finish in less than 50 minutes. As I trained I found myself thinking I could not come close to that. We went and met Dan and had a good time with the girls playing in the water park and eating at Mama Mia's. We got upgraded to a room with a private balcony overlooking the lake. But really what is there to look at? Ferries and a big hotel on an island. But it was nice anyways. The next morning we woke up and I had a light breakfast including a waffle and a piece of cinnamon toast. Then Dan and I went to catch a ferry. It was raining and chilly but the rain slowed down while we were on the ride over. It really turned out to be a good day for running. We met up with James over on the island and stretched a little. I get nervous before a race like this and end up going to the bathroom about 10 times before the race starts. When the race started we took off up the hill and I was going an ok pace. After the first mile I looked down at my ipod and noticed that I was on a 8:40 pace. That's kind of fast for me. It scared me and I slowed down. My second mile was 9:09 and I started thinking that I felt pretty ok. Maybe I should go faster. The third mile was 8:35. That was flying for me. So it scared me again. I slowed down. At that time a girl passed me. She was going the pace I wanted to go and since I'm not good at pacing myself I just followed her. She had a blondish pony tail so I told myself over and over to follow the blond ponytail. The fourth mile was 8:58. We came out of the woods there and ran along side the lake. Thankfully the wind was behind us. It would've been awful to finish into the wind. The fifth mile was 8:53. Blond ponytail started slowing just a tad after the completion of the fifth mile. I found out later that she had slipped in the mud earlier and fallen. I passed her when she slowed down. The last .7 mile was at a 8:34 pace. I finished 5th in my age group with a total of 50:03. 4 seconds off of my original goal. I'm happy since I didn't think I had a chance of being close. There were 16 guys in my age group and about 400 overall entered that race. I finished 106th overall. Here are the results. Stephanie and the girls made it about 5 minutes after I finished. Afterwards we showered, lunched, shopped, ate fudge and then left.

I'll post some pictures later.