Ran 5k road race in 17:22 at the Volksfest Run in Waunakee, Wisconsin, plus about a mile of warmup and cooldown. Wore Brooks Texan racing shoes. It was hot and sunny, 78F. My mile splits were 5:20, 5:46, then 5:42. Not too bright a performance. 12th out of 250 overall, and 6th in my age group. No award. Knees sore, and left leg sore.
30 years later:
I had been looking forward to this race for about a month, and had ridden down with Jim Clark, one of my neighbors and a High School teacher who loved road racing (see the Comment following the Introduction for more about Clark). I thought that I would tear this race up and prove that my summer training was really paying off. Of course, as I've mentioned here before, that summer training was totally unstructured and unsupervised, and included nothing more than trying to get out for a short run every day. In retrospect, I was no match for the other teens who were following a summer program outlined by their experienced coaches.
In looking at the mile splits, you can see the classic high school approach to the race: go out as hard as you can, and then just hang on. Too bad I didn't take just a little off that first mile, because then I'd have felt stronger in the next two miles and been passing the runners who had (like me) stupidly gone out too fast on a hot day. But in those days I lacked that kind of experience and wisdom, I'd have to learn my lessons myself, over time.
It's also funny to think that I was so disappointed with finishing 12th out of 250 runners. In those days, 250 was a pretty big field for a small town road race, and most of the top 50 were fairly serious about running and racing. Not to mention, I'd happily take a couple of miles in the 5:40s now!
The Volksfest Run, under a slightly modified name, is still in existence to this day. In fact, its 31st annual edition was run just three days ago, which tells us that 1979 was only it's 2nd year of existence. In the years just after I graduated high school, I would come back to this event to run the 10 mile race, always a tough test because of the heat and the lack of shade on that course. But those stories are for another time.
Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from The Running Book, published in 1978 by the editors of Consumer Guide, about the Brooks Texan racing shoe (which came as a highly-recommended racing flat, despite its hefty price tag of - gasp - over 28 dollars!). I especially love the last line, that the shoe is "designed for hard running". Right on.
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