Matt Gfeller 5k

Lined up at the start, it was a good feeling to know that so many of my friends, including my wife, would be running in this event with me. The proceeds go to a great cause; research on Traumatic Brain Injuries. My wife, being a physical therapist, has had many patients who suffer from TBI's, unfortunately many of them are young people. In any case, all of us involved had a great day. Erich's son, Fischer completed his first 5k and fell asleep in the stroller with his arms in the air as if he had just won...perhaps a foretaste of the feast to come!

Erich and I ran in the non-challenger race. The challenger race has a stop about halfway through in which the competitors must eat a half dozen of Krispy Kreme's glazed donuts. I can hardly eat one of these even while not running, so I opted to forgo the pleasure of vomiting two miles into a three mile race. I put no training into this race, and was counting on my fitness from cycling to carry me through. Fortunately, 3 miles is a short amount of time to suffer. The course started off pretty much entirely uphill for the first mile-ish, and with the rest of the course being pretty much low rollers, I knew that my time wouldnt be great, but I was figuring around 23 minutes. I was almost spot on, 23'05". I came into the finish not knowing how I had done, it was hard to tell with the pit stop in there who I was running against.

The results are already up, I managed an eighth place finish (out of about 500), and first in my age group. I know that quite a few donut-eater types would have beaten me had they not been wretching in the gutter after eating fried dough, but overall I felt pretty good about my result. Perhaps I should actually start running? Erich and I are already planning our next few running events...Mistletoe, yes. There also happens to be an interesting 17k trailrace at Hanging Rock in March, I plan on toeing the line there, too!