Conoco Phillips Rodeo Run 2010

All I can say is, I've never seen so many 6:30 mile pace runners in my life that ran a 9-minute mile pace. Let me explain...

This race had 13,000 participants, and the crowd at the starting line stretched back as far as I could see, which was several blocks. To organize the crowd, they put up large signs to represent expected mile pace, with the expectation that everyone would organize themselves by speed. They had signs for 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, etc. I lined up in front of the 6:30 sign, which was my pacing goal for this run.

Gun goes off, people start shuffling toward the starting line, then the shuffle becomes a jog as we pass through the starting line. A 6:30 pace jog? Nope. 7:30 pace? Nope. Try 9:00 pace. And I got the feeling that they weren't getting any faster. So I did what any impatient Garmin-watch running fool would do. I literally clawed my way through a wall of about 500 people to reach the runners that were actually running a 6:30 mile pace (yeah...they lined up at the 5:00 sign).

Guess who else I passed? At mile 3 I passed a child!? What the...? How was a child ahead of me for 3 miles? Yay for me...I'm faster than a 10-year old. Then as I was feeling very manly after having asserted my dominance by passing that kid, I saw another kid ahead of me at mile 4. He coughed as I was approaching, and in the high-pitched tone of his cough I could hear that he hadn't even gone through puberty yet. Holy crap! How is some prepubescent kid running a 6:50 mile pace? Total stud.

I finished with a time of 42:45, or a 6:52 mile pace. That's probably like thousandth place or something. Yay for me again. I got thousandth place. I also got the same time as the 10K that I ran last year. This race time shows me that I have some major conditioning required if I want to qualify for Boston. Well that's good, because I'm not letting up anytime soon. So take THAT rodeo run!