Eerie Erie

The Erie Optimists Club holds the Eerie Erie 10K on the Saturday of Halloween each year. It was a good morning for a race. The sky was clear and the temperature was in the low forties by my estimation. Wind was in the forecast but it hadn't picked up by then.

I brought my old Asics Evolution 5's as well as new ones. Sixteen inches of snow had fallen on Wednesday and I wondered about the conditions of part of the road that I knew to be dirt. I asked one of the volunteers what she thought and I was informed that except for a very short piece the section of road in question was now paved. I went back to the car and put on the new pair. They felt much bouncier than the old pair.

I was still standing behind people in costumes with strollers and dogs and dogs in costumes when I saw the front runners about fifty yards out; I don't know what I was thinking. It took a bit of weaving in and out before I was able to run naturally. After a mile and a quarter though nobody went by me and I moved up on runners one at a time. There were two long long uphills which worked to my favor because I have been doing lots of hills in the past couple of months.

The local cementary is at the top of the second long hill; I didn't even feel like I was ready to move in. Also at the top of the last hill I caught a woman in a bridal dress; I urged her to not be in such a hurry to marry. There was a mangled rabbit in the road; I mentioned to a nearby runner that that's what happen when you go out too fast.

Nearing the end there were to men that I speculated to be in my age group. I went by one and her picked up the pace and retook his position but dropped back again and I went by but he sped up again. I had enjoyed the run too much to play the game and also had left a lot on the hills so I was content to hold my pace. I ran with my iphone set to mapmyrun. It showed me running a 7:30 pace which didn't match what it felt like. The distance didn't match either because at 6.1 miles there was still more than a quarter of a mile to go. It ended up showing 6.4 miles at the finish. My time was 48:45 officially. I finished 7th in my age group, three seconds and six seconds behind the two that were also in my group.