gold medal champion

Tomorrow morning I am going to revisit my championship race...the O'Fallon 15K. There is a legacy to live up to here...a lot of pressure. Now, my friends would tell me NOT to share the complete story with you, but I am going to give you full disclosure. I would hate to be found out later.

Two winters ago I ran the same 15K course over Super Bowl weekend. It was my first 15K. Tomorrow's race will be my third official 9.3 mile race (I also ran the Boilermaker last summer). The same Y is having a repeat race in October, called the Fall Finale 15K...if you're in the area you should register and run it with me, of course if you aren't intimidated about running with a champion (hardy, har, har).

As a tribute to my race tomorrow and my moment of glory, I am going to recap my original O'Fallon 15K. The "original" was run in sub-zero cold with a blinding, mind numbing, fierce, I-feel-like-I'm-in-a-wind-tunnel wind. The race course is on a road called Seven Hills Road. It actually has SEVEN hills. It's not false advertising. Combined with the wind and the sharply graded hills, I often felt like I wasn't actually moving. At times, I actually felt like I was running backwards. Needless to say, I didn't think I was going to do well, but since it was my first 15K it was a guaranteed PR. The event has a 5K and a 10K that runs at the same time. The 5K and 10K runners split off from the 15K runners shortly after the start. When I got to this point in the race course, I noticed that the race field for the 15Kers was quite small, so it quickly became a very lonely run. When I finished I decided to stick around and be social, to congratulate the winners, defrost, and possibly collect a ribbon. I figured since the race was so small, I might actually have placed somewhere in my age or gender group. The race officials eventually got to the 15Kers and told us to meet them at the main Y office to collect our prizes and to get our official times. The race directer looked at me and asked my name. She then smiled and handed me....a GOLD MEDAL! I had placed first out of all the females and first in my age group. I'm cool.

And now.....the WHOLE truth.....

I have to confess that there were only three females in the race.

So, tomorrow I will revisit the "gold medal" course, only it will be a blistering 90-something degree morning. The race will have a completely different set of extreme weather conditions, but hopefully there will be a bunch of sissy girly runners out there that will decide to sleep in instead of sweating it out on good ol' Seven Hills Road...and I can have a repeat "gold medal" performance.