I'm not a fast runner. Never have been.

And I certainly don't run for speed. I run because I like the way it makes me feel. I race only to compete with myself to see if maybe I've gotten a little bit faster over the years. But it's rare these days that I do a lick of speed work.



So I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when I found out I won my age group in a five mile race I did while I was on vacation.

My family pretty much goes on vacation the same week in July every year, and the Seashore Striders in Rehoboth happen to hold their annual five mile race on the Sunday after we get into town. It's a great, well-run, low key race.

I signed up the day-of and for $25 I got a tech shirt and some fantastic post-race food.


Post-race Rita's for the win!

In years past when I've done this race, I've gone out way too fast and blown up by mile two.

This year, I was coming in with zero expectations. I needed to do between five and six miles as part of half marathon, and this race seemed like a fun way to get that distance in.

I started off plenty slow, but was surprised that I was able to pass a decent amount of people in the early stages. Don't get me wrong, there were still tons of people ahead of me, but I was running pretty strong for having not raced in a while.

I got lucky and the weather was mostly overcast and fairly comfortable for most of the race. The sun came out strongly around mile 4, but at that point, I just told myself I had about 10 more minutes of running max.



I finished in 46:36 by Garmin, and 46:46 by the official time (gun time only, no chip time). It was not an especially fast time, so after eating my post-race Rita's, my mom and I headed back to the beach house.

I wish we would have stuck around for the awards though because they had really, really nice medals for all the age group winners. I emailed the race director that night when I saw that I had placed, asking if there was any chance I could pick up the award sometime during the week, but sadly I never heard back.



Womp, womp. The first (and probably only) time I place in an age group and I don't even get the awesome award that goes with it.

Overall though the race was fun, and if we're in Rehoboth next year for vacation I'm sure I'll do it again.