“…He stopped, his heart pounding in fear. Before his startled eyes, a white mist burst forth from an unmarked grave and formed into a large horse carrying a headless rider. Ichabod Crane let out a terrible scream as the horse leapt toward him at a full gallop. He took to his heels, running as fast as he could…”
Last Saturday, we found ourselves in “Sleepy Howell” for the Headless Horseman 5K. It was our first night race, which was pretty cool. We often train in the dark, but have never raced in it.
The course was fun and fast, taking us through downtown and then lakeside and through a luminary-lit cemetery.
The headless horseman started things off, oddly, galloping away from us. I guess he was intimidated, as there were 600 of us.
Running in a hooded cloak and mask was about as comfortable as you might think, so I pulled the hood down and the mask off after the first quarter mile. A few people thought I was wearing a black dress as a costume. That’s ok. Black goes with everything.
I started at the front of the group, as is typically my strategy. I’d rather get passed by a few fast runners than have to pass hundreds of slower runners. Lined up along side me was superman, a zombie, a male nun with a baby stroller, who others around us and who knew him, assured us would still kick all of our asses, which he did.
Angela started a little further back. She has a more nuanced calculation when deciding where to place herself in the pack. It involves the BMI of the other competitors, how much crap they’re wearing, and the phase of the moon.
We both ran our hardest, and both of us ran paces we were proud of. Angela placed 7th out of the 50 women in her age group, which is nothing to sneeze at. I ended up placing 2nd in my age group and 25th overall. There were a lot of fast runners. Many of them were young. I’m glad that I wasn’t in the 14-15 year old age group, for example, were my time would have earned me 8th in my age group. Where do these kids come from?
Post race refreshment was fun, a mix of the usual stuff and Halloween candy, which was pretty cool.
Overall, it was a fun race and a good time. We’ll be back next year.
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