I won!

 

The Bemidji Blue Ox Marathon took place October 8th and 9th. There are many options: 5K, 10K, 1/2 marathon, full marathon, etc. I chose the 5K which took place on Friday afternoon. There were many positives. Having a race in the afternoon allowed us to drive to Bemidji on race day rather than arriving the day before and finding a hotel room. The weather's been unseasonably warm this autumn. Fortunately, it wasn't too warm. It was in the mid-70s and mostly cloudy. Perfect. (I'm told the previous couple years it's actually snowed for the race. 

I grabbed my packet and had plenty of time for a good warm-up. 234 racers were signed up! This is one of the biggest races I've ever been a part of. I was feeling good, confident I'd be able to run a sub-30 minute race for the first time this year... 

Here I am preparing to start:

Unfortunately, due to covid, instead of having everyone bunch up and start at the same time, they had a rolling start - one at a time. For me, this took away the adrenaline rush I would normally have at the beginning of a race.

Very happy to begin running, I was the third of fourth runner out of the gate:

The location of the race is beautiful, most of it following a bike trail next to Lake Bemidji:

As I said, I felt great. It seemed like I was running at a pretty good pace. Maybe, today, I could achieve my goal...

At the mid-point of the race (it was and out and back course) I noticed I was well over the 15 minute mark. I guess I wasn't running as fast as I thought I was. It would be tough to make up all that time. 

Here I am waving to my personal photographer (Faith) at the end of the race:

They took a short video of me crawling over the finish line - see this link.

As it turns out, I didn't achieve my goal. My time was 32:37. The title of this post may seem a bit misleading... Of the eight 60-somethings racing, I took first place! Overall, 77th place.

More photos here.