100 x 5K overshadowed by a personal best for James Martin

Date	Celsius ° (C*9/5)+32=F	Place of run	Duration (min)	Dewey sprint	Dewey sprint	start time
July 17	≈ 11	Johnston, Iowa	≈80	1:07.06	1:03.82	06:34

            I tried the Dewey sprint during the first part of the run today.  The results were terrible.  Not faster than the record, but SLOWER than the previous WORST time.  I felt like I was trying to balance on top of a broom handle.  My legs felt like they were sore, unstable, and ready to collapse. 

            I ran by Dad’s place and stopped in for a minute.  I told him that I might need to STOP running for a couple weeks—maybe walk or something.  I’m not sure if I can allow myself to take such a break. 

Date	Celsius ° (C*9/5)+32=F	Place of run	Duration (min)	Sets of 25 push-ups	Dewey sprint	Dewey sprint	start time
July 19	≈ 15	Johnston, Iowa	≈27	1	1:00.02	58.24	08:13

            As you can read above, two days ago, I was thinking that I might need to rest my legs.  I was thinking that I should walk for two weeks until my legs rest up enough and heal. 
I was worried that they were getting stressed out, and serious damage might be in the future.  TODAY I learned otherwise.  I ran down from Rhonda’s to the Dewey sprint path.  Instead of charging right in, I looped around some houses to give myself a bit of a warm-up, and ran the path at what I thought was a decent pace.  I looked at the watch and was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of zeroes.  The careful reader of this blog will know that I love to see lots of zeroes in my results.  1:00.02!  Then I ran for about 20 minutes and tried the sprint again.  This time I was super happy to see 0:58.24—a new record for sure!  Of course, these may not be great from as objective point of view, but since I am kicking the crap out of my old times, I am quite pleased. 

            My results may have been influenced by osmosis from watching a heap of excellent runners. The 100 x 5K relay took place today at the Johnston High School track.  During this event, 100 runners of extremely high class, got together and completed a 500,000 meter relay.  Each runner ran 5K, while carrying a baton that they gave to the next runner.  When I heard about the event, from my sister—the mother of a Johnston HS cross country team member— I thought they just wanted to find 100 runners of any caliber so I volunteered to run one of the legs. After all, I am staying with my sister who lives a 6 minute bike ride from the track. 

But…she then informed me that in order for the organizers to accept your application to run, your personal best time must have been 17 minutes, 30 seconds.  This is much faster than I can achieve.  I WAS able, however, to assist.  I operated one of the stop watches as a back-up timer.  While I was there, from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., the runners were flying around the track.  They were achieving times below 16 minutes at times.  These guys would run their first lap, or their middle lap, at 72 seconds. When I was in Emmetsburg two years ago, I ran around a similar high school track.  The fastest I ran was 75.17, on the 31^st of July 2012, and that was ONE lap running full out all the way. These guys were coolly beating that time during a simple lap in the middle of 12 ½ laps. 

In order to prove the authenticity of their effort, the organizers had to set up a video camera to record the entire event from up in the press box above the field.  They also needed to organize a person to take a picture of each hand off.  Then they needed to record each runner’s time with the super high clock and a back up timer with a stop watch.

A fine event.