Houston Running Bloggers Sunday Race Report

It is about 2:45 p.m. and Waverly and I made it back from Huntsville State Park after doing an approximately 7-mile loop that begins and ends at the Nature Interpretative Center. We ran and walked with Ken Johnson, the president of the Seven Hills Running Club in Huntsville, in 1:45 - 15 minutes per mile. It was Waverly's first experience on the trails. We started at about 11:15 a.m. so it wasn't exactly chilly, but she did well. She walked more than she ran but put together a total distance of just over 10 miles this weekend. Nice job!

I did the Fleet Feet 8.4K this morning in downtown Houston. Since I'm not officially training for anything and I'm not going for HARRA's Iron Foot Award, I just decided to take it a little easy and do the shorter race. Especially with the heat and humidity!

I ran among five (5) Houston Running Bloggers and finished third in the bunch:

1.) Sam Rodriguez, 29:59.4 (4th overall; 1st in 30-34 age group)
2.) Jessica Alexander, 46:38.0 (48th overall; 3rd in 25-29 age group)
3.) Jon Walk, 51:47.2
4.) Cassie Cowan, 53:19.4
5.) Sarah Graybeal, 56:07.0

Sam ran a sizzling 5:46 per minute mile. (Houston Striders' Brett Riley, Carlos Deason and Jason Moreno went 1-2-3.) Jessica really ran a nice race as she slipped in under a 9-minute per mile pace. (That's a 1:57 half marathon in January!) I didn't see her after the turnaround. For the first mile or so, I was about three white dividing stripes behind her and she eventually stretched it to 5 before I stopped at the water stop past mile 2.

Cassie caught Sarah at about mile 2, ran with her for about a mile and then had me within her sight but - ah, no orange shirt! - she couldn't catch me. (Psst! I had the orange shirt on, but it didn't feel right - and I didn't want to give her any extra incentive.)

I ran OK. I'm not going to complain one bit. I met my goal of running under 10 minutes per mile even though that would be closer to a 31-minute 5K, but looking at the splits below the 5K was very close to 30 minutes. (I like everyone else is waiting on the permanent cold front!)

My splits from this morning were as follows:

Mile 1 -- 9:22.70
Mile 2 -- 9:46.12
Halfway -- 25:36.58
Mile 3 -- 10:06.50
Mile 4/5 -- 20:25.97
Last .208 -- 2:06.31
Back Half -- 26:11.02

Watch: 51:47.60 Chip: 51:47.2 Gun: 51:55.9

In the 25K, the Houston Running Bloggers went like this:

1.) Steve Bezner, 2:25:39.0
2.) Holden Choi, 3:02:31.5
3.) Jennifer Kim, 3:20:58.5

Offering moral support at the corner of Shepherd and Memorial Drive when I made the turnaround was HRB's LisaLeese.

And turning in the fastest marathon of any Houston Running Blogger this year was Angleton's Edwin Quarles today in San Antonio. Quarles, 39, finished the San Antonio Marathon in 3:51:30 good enough for 16th (of 66) in his 35-39 age group.

Congratulations to everyone!