Zibblog

A couple of weekends ago, I ran in the 4th annual Jungle Run in Los Gatos. You can sign up to either run it as a 10k or half marathon. Two years ago I tried the half marathon, but both last year and this year, I didn’t feel like I was in good enough shape to do as well as I would like. (Personally, I feel like rainy weather has lasted rather late into the spring for the last couple of years, but that might just be me.). If you want to read about last year’s experience, I blogged it here. This year, Mike was out of town during the race, so my main goal was to beat last year’s time of 46:59 (7:30/mile). The race had been experiencing a pretty steady decline, but the final results showed 280 10k runners and 369 half marathon runners, which was the highest total number of runners since the first race in 2003. Joe commented last year that he wanted to see an entirely white running outfit to scare the other runners with my paleness, so I wore a white shirt this year.

The race itself was a lot of fun. At the 2 mile point, I was at just under 14 minutes total (around the same pace as last year), and I knew that the last couple of miles were probably going to hurt. The pack seemed to have sorted itself out by that point because I think only about 2 people passed me over the course of the last 4 miles and I don’t know if I passed anybody myself after mile 3. Around mile 5, I felt like throwing up for a little while, but I only had a mile left so I figured I’d just run through it. I crossed the line at 46:05 (7:25/mile), so I was pretty happy to put in my best time ever. I always find it hard to believe the amount of extra effort it seems to take to turn a normal weekend run of 8:15/mile or so into 7:25/mile.

If a race is small enough, you’ll have an uneven distribution across age groups. 4 women in the 20-29 age bracket beat me, but somehow I ended up finishing first for 20-29 men. It probably says more about a lack of good runners in my age bracket than it does about my ability, but I did end up with a rhino for my trouble.

I recently got an email about race photos from the Jungle Run, so I took a look to see if there were any that were good. Surprisingly enough, there was this photo that I believe makes me look very sporty.

Well, today was the big run in Los Gatos. The run was at 7, so I got down there around 6:50, picked up my race bib, and found Mike with a couple of minutes to spare before race start. Our sentiment at race time was that there were less people this year. I looked up the results afterwards and in 2003 (the year that it took the place of the silicon valley marathon) there were 1098 total (700 1/2 marathon, 398 10k) and in 2004 there were 526 total (312 1/2 marathon, 214 10k), so it will be interesting to see the results from this year’s run.

Both the 10k and the 1/2 marathon begin and end at the Los Gatos High School track. The first mile had a small uphill section towards the beginning that keeps the pack bunched up. After we crested the hill, Mike and I started picking up speed and passing whoever we could. We hit the first mile marker at about 8 miles exactly, which wasn’t too bad for the first mile. The second mile has what is the longest downhill section of the 10k where we picked up some speed. Not too long after that, the half and the 10k split up. At this point, it became very apparent that there must not be a lot of people running the 10k because I feel like I could only see maybe 3 or 4 runners ahead at any one time. Our split for the second mile was just under 7 minutes, which I was pretty happy with, but I was wondering if we would be able to keep it up.

At some point around mile 3 Mike and I settled into our usual routine. Mike powers up the hills, I follow Mike up the hill as fast as I can thinking a combination of “I wish I was taller” and “Gotta keep up with Mike”, I stride down the hill putting a little distance between us, and Mike catches up by the next hill. We ended mile 3 with a split of 8:02, mile 4 with 7:25, and mile 5 with 7:42. Somewhere around 5 1/2 came the conversation where each one of us was hoping the other didn’t have some sort of blazingly fast half mile left in him followed by the agreement that no such half mile was going to be run. The last 300 meters or so takes place on the high school track, and as we entered the track there were 2 runners in sight. I took off and succeeded in passing both of them with a final sprint. Mike passed one of them and came in a few short seconds behind me. Total time for the 6.2 miles was about 47 minutes giving us an average mile of around 7:35. All in all, it was a fun race, but I wonder if we would have ran it a little faster had there been more racers around our speed.

Update: The results for the race have been posted online. I ended up 16th out of 158 for the 10k and got 4th in the men’s 20-29 age group (I will admit that there were only 11 people in my age group).

I finally registered for my first race of the summer, The Jungle Run. I ran the half marathon last year, but this year I think that Mike and I are just going to run the 10k portion so that we are better prepared for a half marathon later.