5/15/2007
The largest road running race in Kansas is the Wichita River Festival. It takes place on the first Saturday of a week long city festival. It’s an amazing experience to race the River Run and to be up near the front. At the half way point of the 10k race (6.2 miles) you make a turn around a few orange cones and head into one of the most positive experiences. The entire route back folks shout out words of encouragement with a few shouts from people who know your name. Usually by this point you’re really hurting from the drain of the race and the words of positive encouragement really help. The running community here in Wichita usually makes a big show at the River Run and so you can expect to see folks you know nearly the entire way back. It is simply an awesome experience.
There are a few things that can make the River Run a challenge. Besides the fact that everyone is gunning to place, it happens relatively early in the season, and you also stand great odds that the weather will suddenly spike with high temperatures. In the past three years, I can only remember one of them having moderate temperatures. This year was no exception. The temperatures for the race were hotter than we’ve had practically the entire month before. The humidity was also high from all the recent storms. This made for a hot, humid, and sunny race conditions. Not impossible, but something everyone definitely commented on and that is reflected in the resulting times for a lot of folks.
The opening of the race is a huge kick, with a military cannon firing in downtown as the official start gun. You get to see the blaze of light and smoke for about a second before you feel the sound reverberate off your body. The first half mile takes you into Wichita’s bar district and historic warehouse are known as Old Town. A couple of quick lefts and soon your on your way back through downtown and towards the Arkansas River.
If you can keep your first mile dialed in fast but not a gut buster, then you generally have a great shot at making the top cut. If you go out too fast, you stand a chance of blowing up. Too slow, and you’ll never be in distance to challenge the other racers. Typically the first and second miles things really start to settle out with very few changes from there on. After the first mile, I knew I was in for trouble. My gut was complaining the whole time and through the second mile I was breathing harder than I should have been. I could tell this was not going to be a pleasant run.
I’ll spare you all the gory details, but in the end it was a hot, sticky and painful race. It was Definitely one to improve upon ha. I think a little more practice leading up to the race next year is a definite goal. However, with all that being said. I do think that next years will be a lot better simply because of how hectic this year has been for training. I look forward to getting in some great miles this summer and lots of bike rides and swims to really mix things up.
I wasn’t exactly packing heat for the race, but I was carrying around a little extra weight for the race. The Wednesday before the race, I got fitted with new braces. Talk about a slow painful experience! I feel like I’m running around with a cattle guard for my face when I run. If you want to look about ten years younger, this is definitely the trick! The only hard part now is giving up a lot of things that I’m used to eating because my teeth are too sore. Granola bars and the cereals with fruit and nuts are definitely out of the question, as I found out the morning after I got the new bling bling.
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