Running for the birdies and close encounter with the Walking Lady

This year, my goal is to run 2 races every month. So far, I was able to do it. I started last March when I celebrated my 1st Running Anniversary. The Snowy Egret 5k at Scarborough is my 8th race for 2012 and my 2nd race for the month of May.

This is my first "trail race" for this year [and hoping to do more]. I didn't know it until I ran the race. It was a nice nonthreatening course. Though it was a little humid, the shady trail kept us cool.

The race is a replay of my Maine Mall 5k experience in terms of "running". I ran this race again when I was passed by an elderly lady about sixty-ish years old who was just walking the whole time.

 

Let me tell you about this amazing woman. I saw this woman probably more than 5 times already since I started running. She seems to be all over the place. LOL And each time that we ran, she would just be walking the entire 5k race. She walks with grace like a royalty. She walks in a choreographed rhythm as if she was walking on air. She is fast and unstoppable. She never shows tiredness. She is relaxed and poised.

The race course had a one long straight route where we turn around at a certain point. On my way back I saw her from a distance in her signature graceful brisk walking coming my way. I continued jogging while a woman kept passing me by just like the one at the Mall race. By that time I was already contemplating to do the trick I did before but not really sure if I really want to or not.

 

After about 5 minutes of not-stop steady jogging, I realized that the walking lady caught up with me and she was walking right beside me and started talking to me when an spectator said... "good job" to us. It was then I realized that I was really jogging slow or maybe she was really fast. Well, I wasn't really threatened by her until that Maine-Mall-part-2 woman caught up with me again. Just in time, I saw that I was already almost 500 feet from the finish line. So, I sped up agian... sprinted... and ran as fast as I could passing again a couple of people on my way to the finish line.

I clocked in 36:08 at 11:38 pace and placing 181st out of the 225 participants. At the finish line I finally got the chance to talk to this amazing woman and boy, she is one of the nicest people I ever met. She even gave me advice on race walking and told me that she would gladly coach me to race walk. Her name is Debbie.