Hot Coco 5K - Not Your Father's Race Report

No, it's not your father's race report. But it is your father-in-law's race report.

My son-in-law, Barry, trained for his first 5K by following the Couch-to-5K Running Plan. He asked me to run the race with him as he was completing his training. This plan has helped many a beginner through their first 5K run. And Barry followed it as much as possible. Fairly well in fact, until some life impacting events managed to get in the way. Things like Hurricane Sandy, and the birth of a second son, Vincent. Stuff like that.

But we had registered for the Hot Coco 5K in Cheshire, CT pretty early on, And a commitment is a commitment, right? Well... Barry didn't feel as well prepared as he'd have liked, and had been having some leg pain. I would have let him off, but Veronica wouldn't. She told him he had to go.

So we went. Debbie had been staying on to help with the newborn and now 2-year-old Malcolm. I was there for the weekend - to visit, but also to pick her up and bring her home.

I felt that a fairly large race like this would actually be pretty good for a beginner. There were over 600 runners in the 5K, and more for the kids run. It started and ended at a school, so there we could keep warm before and after the run. And there was plenty of food and - get this - hot coco!

Barry wanted to run the first mile, and then play it by ear after that. Sure enough, we did run that first hilly mile at an easy pace - about 11:30 or so. But that included the 40 seconds it took us just to get to the start.
Barry wanted to walk right after that. No problem. Except that his calf was bothering him again, and he said it actually hurt more to walk than to run.

I wanted to say, "well, then run," but I bit my tongue. Eventually we did do some running during that second mile. It probably wound up about half and half, and we came to mile two 24 minutes into the run. I mentioned that the winners had been done for quite some time, and Barry got a little depressed. I didn't mean for that to be the result.

But we did start running again just after the two-mile mark, which was at the start of a bike trail. The funny thing was that we started running faster and faster as we approached the finish. It was kind of fun to pass so many people on that trail. We turned onto the road just before the mile-3 mark, and I realized that we ran that mile in under 10 minutes. That's cooking!

We crossed the line in 35 minutes flat (so our real times were about 34:20). Here's a short video of our spectacular finish! (I've got the yellow jacket, and Barry is just ahead of me in gray.) We've already started talking about our next one.