I ran five races last weekend...

I'm running up a hill behind eventual race winner, Danny Bennett, at the inaugural Chesapeake Bay Running Club's Trail Run#1 5-Kilometer at King's Landing Park in Huntingtown (Calvert County), Maryland. This was on Chesapeake Bay Running Club's website: http://www.cbrcmd.org

... And don't worry, I didn't go as crazy with races last weekend as this entry title might suggest. This year in order to cut back on the number of races I've been running over the past couple of years, I think it might be worthwhile to cut back on weekends where I do races on both days of the weekend. This has been my first weekend in 2009 where I ran races on both days, and I'm fortunately doing all right.

I started off heading towards southern Maryland for this new trail race series that the Chesapeake Bay Running Club (http://www.cbrcmd.org) is putting on this year, the first of which happened this past Saturday (January 24, 2008) at King's Landing Park in Huntingtown (Calvert County), MD. Like last year, my first MARYLAND race of the year happened to be in Calvert County (the final Maryland county I had left in 2007 when I first attempted to run in a running event in every Maryland county within a year).

I had never been to King's Landing Park before, and as a matter of fact, I think I've only been in in Huntingtown just sort of passing through. It was a nice park, considering it was overcast, but the weather was nice for running (not too cold and certainly not hot). There were some lighter rolling hills, but nothing too difficult. I'm typically not much of a trail runner, though I figured I give this a whirl since it was relatively inexpensive and low-key. Plus, I heard it was more open fields, the kind of cross-country I like, and in fact it was a good mix of open fields, hills, and clear trails.
As I ran I felt like I held on all right. I spent most of the race chasing the race leader (who in my opinion is one of the faster runners in southern Maryland). I knew if I could hang with him, I would no doubt have a good race for myself. There were some narrow trails here and there, but no real hazardous rocks, roots, or stream crossings. We went over some wooden bridges which slowed us down a bit. A little after the middle of the race, while running up this steady hill with the beautiful river off to my right, I realized that I really liked this course. There was this one short, but steeper hill we went up a couple of times and I really felt the effort of the race on that.
We finished coming up that hill a second time, running through this trail, and then finishing briefly after the trail by this pavilion. I crossed the finish line in about 19:21, which I thougth was pretty good for me considering it was a trail race and it could have very well been a little longer than 3.1 miles (5-kilometers/5K). Typically I wouldn't consider that a strong time for me, but given the terrain, I'll take it gratefully. I still enjoyed the race and if they have it again in the future, I wouldn't mind coming back to it. In fact, they have five more coming up throughout the year into the spring/summer, and their next one is a four-miler at Calvert Cliffs State Park in Lusby (Calvert County), MD on Saturday, February 7, so I'm hopin' to get back to southern MD for that one as well.
Also, it was probably beneficial that I did not run much harder than I did or get hurt, because the next day (Sunday, January 25, 2009), I planned to compete at another all-comers' indoor track meet at the Prince George's Complex in Landover (Prince George's County), Maryland.
Now these all-comers' indoor track meets have been known to go on for most of the day because hundreds upon hundreds of participants crowd into one of the nation's best indoor track facilities, and as a result they do so many heats of various events. As a result, it often can get very noisy, chaotic, and disorganized, and I think there's only so much the staff can do to efficiently run the meet. In other words, these meets at the P.G. Complex can get quite complex, and it's probably not the fault of the staff. I ran at a couple of these meets last year and they took up a significant portion of my day, yet this one was the longest of the three I did, and while I spent about ten hours at this meet, I witnessed and experienced some prettty humorous things which I will relate to you below along with my race performances (and please don't take any of what I'm about to say as harsh criticism towards the meet staff or the meets themselves):

- First off, it was constantly noisy, so sometimes it was hard to hear announcements

for when certain events were coming up. If you weren'ts very attentive, you could end up
missing your event. Fortunately, that didn't happen to me.

- The first event I ran was the one-mile race. We heard the event being called and
I was with some other people who were at least college-age, but not quite masters (I'll
call our age group "sub-masters"), so we knew we weren't gonna be in any heats
with the high-school-or-younger crowd, nor did we intend on running with the masters. We
still were not clear on which heat we were gonna be in. They started the high school
boys heat (and I didn't see exactly what happened next, but I heard about it), they
suddenly stopped the high school race within the first lap and grouped us together with
the masters. I was fine with that, but it was very strange how they just stopped the
high school race after it had begun (fortunately they got to go after our race). Just
before our heat started, one of the masters runners got really upset and started
protesting one of the race starters 'cause I don't think he thought it was fair that they
did not make an announcement that the masters were being combined with a younger crowd
and that they were about to go off, because there was actually a masters runner in the
bathroom who was planning on doing the mile, and he had no idea about this sudden change
of plans at the meet. I think maybe he wanted the masters to run separately. Even though some might see that he was making a scene on the track, I could
see where he was coming from and I didn't think it was fair that they were doing this in
the mile race with stopping high schoolers just as their race had started and suddenly
putting us on the track without much of an announcement. He went so far as to stand in the middle of
the track in front of the starting line in hopes to maybe stall the race, and the
starters just began ignoring him and got ready to start up the race. Eventually the
masters runner turned around and started back towards the starting line just as the race
started, so some people had to dodge around him. At first I thought he was kind of being
an overzealous butthole giving the starters a lot of lip, but when I thought about how
they were going to start the race and the guy protesting knew there was another runner
who wanted to do the race in the bathroom who probably would have been at the starting
line had he known the race was going to start so suddenly for the masters, I thought it
he was kind of brave trying to keep the meet fair for all of the participants.
Well fortunately that mile race was one of the better one-mile races I've run in a while; I
hit about 5:03, keeping the pace fairly even (1:13, 2:29, and 3:47 were my 1/4-mile, 1/2-mile, and 3/4-mile splits as well as a 3:08 for the 1,000 meter split). The gentleman who was in the bathroom actually was able to jump in the race later, get his finishing time, and put it in the
results (this gentleman also is a race director and he his involved with getting some of
the race results from these meets up on the internet, so I think he was able to advocate
for himself pretty nicely).

- After the mile, my one of my buddies who was running convinced me to hop in the
400-meter with him, and I told him I wanted to focus on the 800 and 3,200 and he said
that I would probably still have enough rest time with how long the meet was taking. I
figured he had a good point, and I did the 400. I definitely had enough rest with more
than three hours between the one-mile and our 400-meter race, a race I haven't done since
middle school when I was a sprinter for the Howard County Junior Striders. I barely
finished second-to-last here and I think I got about a minute-and-four seconds which I
think is about a second or two slower than my indoor PR, so it was neat to do that
two-lap race.

- After that there was more waiting for the 800 meter race (which is about half-a-mile),
and I was hoping to go under 2:15, because I do believe that's my best time at this
venue. While I was waiting, I noticed some kids playing with a toy car right by one of the
curves of the track while a race was going on, and I saw the car go under the fencing a
couple of times. Fortuantely it went into the outter lanes and the race was going on in
the inner lanes, but from on top of the bleachers, it might have looked like an
interesting sight with a toy car on the track while runners were racing on it.

- In the 800 meter race, I was in the last heat and they sort of lumped us together in a larger
heat, which was tougher to run in in an indoor track since there is more turns and it
pretty much feels like a sprint. I didn't quite runt he 2:15 that I wanted, but I think
it was 2:16/2:17... I was barely able to catch a glimpse of the clock as I crossed the
line and someone who finished just in front of me said he hit 2:15. I didn't get an
official time since they didn't put that heat in the results. I didn't think that was
too bad considering it was a more crowded race and I had to go around a lot more people
than I'm used too going at that pace. We were all in the same boat, trying to get around
each other; seemed like a heated battle, jockeying for position. Maybe instead of
"The 300", they should somehow make a parody of it with a movie on that rather
tight race and call it "The 800" :)-

- At this point I think it was a bit past four in the afternoon, and the meet had
started around eight in the morning, so I was there for pretty much eight hours. Yet, the
next race I wanted to do was the 3,200 meter, which happens to usually be the last race
of the meet. I was looking forward to it, but then I heard they made an announcement to
cancel it right around the time I did the 800, because we had to be out of the indoor
track facility by 6, and they still had a lot of heats of the 200 meter race (which
followed the 800 meter race). They said they were going to end the meet right after the
200's, which they hoped to have done by 5:15. Now this left 45 minutes roughly before we
actually had to be out of there, so this very avid runner decided to
hold an "unofficial" running of the 3,000 meter (which would be fifteen laps)
on the track after the "official" track events ended with the 200. Timing was
going to be self-timed, meaning we use our own watches if we have them. I was definitely on board with that self-timed race idea of his... Oh but did we know what was to come.

- Meanwhile the 200 meter race heats were still going on; many many heats of it. Towards the end of it, I noticed some of the people who were originally going to do the 3,000/3,200 (in the past when I've done this meet you can choose to do the 15-lap 3,000 option or the 16 lap 3,200
option, and I always like to do the 3,200 'cause it's closer to two miles, and they run
them both simultaneously on the track), were actually in line to do the 200. I decided,
"oh what the heck, I might as well hop in this race and see what happens since they
cancelled the official 3-kilometer/3,200 races." Towards the last minute, I hopped in and
they did not really have time to assign me a lane and really see who was in the heat (I
was in the last heat, and normally in these sprinting events, since there are six lanes,
there is a maximum of six runners in each heat since every competitor has their own lane.
This race is only one lap since the track is 200 meters in length. I ended up in the
outermost lane with another runner; we both shared it. Now this might have looked strange to those observing, having everyone starting in their own lanes, except for the two of us in the
outside lane, but I think at this point the meet staff did not care. I hadn't run this
race since middle school either and I hit about 41 seconds and got last place, and that
was fine, 'cause even though it was over ten seconds slower than my PR from years ago, I
thought it served as a fast warm-up lap for the upcoming self-timed 3,200 race.

- Right after the 200 (which went until closer to 5:40ish), the gentleman who wanted to have teh self-timed race loudly announced something like, "okay, self-timed 3,000! At first, it was me, the gentleman, and this older lady lined up, and just as we were about to start some other people who were interested gathered on the track, but the woman did not wait up, and started off on her 3,000. Just as we were about to start, one of the officials yelled to us "off the track,
no more racing!" I couldn't blame them, I didn't want them to get in trouble.
Meanwhile, the woman who had started this self-timed race on her own was probably a couple of laps into it at this point, and she kept on going.
Some of us stood our ground on the track, and I decided to stick
aroundn since I waited for almost ten hours to do this race, and the official kept yelling
at us. The gentleman who wanted to do the self-timed race yelled back something like, "can we at least cool down on the
track?" And after the official gave us a "no", we decided to scrap the
self-timed race to not cause any trouble.
However, while all this was going on, the woman kept doing her laps on the track, and I thought it was funny that while everyone was clearing out and the officials were telling people to get off of the track, there was this woman in her seventies going around the track in her one-person self-timed race. Watching her go around, I thought it was a rather fitting ending to a meet with some more chaotic instances throughout it. It was not only humorous, but inspiring to watch as well. There were less than ten minutes to go until 6 at this point, so we could still stay there.
Suddenly a thought came over me to do a lap with her. I snatched up my drawstring
backpack with some of my gear in it. I wanted to run with my drawstring pack on so I
had all my stuff together in case things got real rough and I had to get outta Dodge. I
hopped on the track and did a lap with her, not knowing exactly what lap she was on. I
ran with her, feeling a bit weird at first that some eyes of some remaining people
getting ready to go were on us. Yet, I didn't care, I had already put myself in a
position to embarrass myself in running in the shorter sprinting distances that I raced in
earlier at the meet; distances I typically am not that good at. I've told many of my
passions of running races in all of Maryland's counties over the past couple of years, so
in the scheme of things, this probably was not even as wild. Towards the end of the lap,
the woman said she only had one more lap to go, so I decided to do her last lap with her as
well and we finished together! It was awesome, running with someone in a one-person,
self-timed race at the end of a track meet.
The woman ended up running a mile in 8:59, and she would have liked to have gone for seven
more laps to finish her 3,000 meter planned distance, but she decided it best to do a mile instead since she was
running out of time before 6. I told the gentleman who wanted to do the self-timed race, her time ('cause he actually helps post the
resutls of these meets on the internet as well), so I think her one-woman self-timed race
may get some coverage along with some of the other races!! In conclusion we were one of
the last ones to leave... We distance runners sure do know how to "close down"
a place :)-

So yes, that were some of my interesting experiences at one fo the most funniest, quirkiest, and craziest track meets I have ever been too. When I told my family about it later that night, I laughed so hard I almost cried (and I haven't laughed that hard or loud in a long time).
They are having another meet there on Super Bowl Sunday (February 1) coming up this weekend. I'm hoping to go back and to perhaps do the 3,200 as long as the meet does not go on too late. All of the events could not even occur there before time ran out, so that's how I know that has been my longest meet I've done there. Hopefully next week does not come near topping that; though who knows, it may top it in how funny things may turn out there :)