naturally, like any good american, i celebrated america's independence by... of all things... running a 2 mile road race. more specifically, i ran the 20th annual john carson 2 mile road race in chelmsford.
for anyone curious, john carson is not the comedian and former host of the tonight show, johnny carson. (insert ed mcmahon's "yes!") this john carson was a chelmsford high star runner who was struck and killed by a train during a training run on december 30, 1987. thus, the proceeds from the race go to the scholarship fund bearing his name.
now, i suck at the john carson 2 mile road race. i probably would not have ran the race had it not been for my favorite sister-in-law (janine). janine had heard about the race some time ago and was very much interested in running the road race in her bid to become more fit. so to support my favorite sister-in-law, karen and i agreed to run the race with her.
when the three of us had decided to run, we had also hoped that karen and janine's cousin (karlene) would also be interested in running the race with us. karlene used to be a distance running freak. since college, however, karlene has had some setbacks and has been quite hesitant to run distance. (i would say karlene is quite competitive, and the reason for her hesitation is that she would be extremely dissatisfied and upset with her current running ability as she would be comparing it with her "glory days". but, that's just my opinion. if i compared my own abilities of today with my "glory days"... i'd be quite upset with a lot of things too... like my diminishing video gaming skills. a man needs his video games!)
needless to say, the idea of a "cousin's race" was not enough to tempt karlene to run again. it did, however, get her husband (tommy) to run the race (even though he left us in the dust with his friend, kevin, during the actual race).
so with no "cousin's race", things were looking pretty grim from the get-go. in addition, the rain was just coming down... and down... and down. (from past experiences, the road race is usually hot and sunny... not yesterday.) the temperature was cold. as all of us took shelter by the local liquor store waiting for the race to start, i dreaded the idea of running with wet boxers, wet socks, and wet sneakers. (i was even tempted to skip the race altogether and just hang out at the liquor store... it could have been more fun.) then all of a sudden... the rain stopped! (apparently mother nature does occasionally feel bad for me.)
(pictured below are janine and karen before the start of the road race.)
with the weather lightening up, we were able to run the two mile road race. the race was full of runners... men... women... children... young... old. there was just a fun atmosphere during the race. i think the most interesting part of the race for me was when everyone went under the bridge near the beginning of the race. everyone was hooting, hollering and cheering, and the sounds were just echoing off the walls. it was fantastic!
the race itself was not so bad either. there were people throughout the course cheering everyone on (in part because they were getting ready for the parade directly afterwards). karen and janine's aunt and uncle (denise and paul) cheered for us, as did karlene, and janine's family (pj, kaleigh and little pj) and kevin's family. it was nice.
anyway, the three of us finished the race together. according to the official results, janine finished 1556 out of 1645 runners. with her time of 27:41, she was 99 out of 111 for her age category. (that basically works out to a mile pace of 13:51.) that's pretty good! she did very well.
all in all, the race was a good time. (of course, getting free food afterwards and a free t-shirt also makes the road race seem all the much better.) i think janine enjoyed it as well (and that really is all that matters).
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