This morning, in Haltom City, Texas, I did my 19th footrace since Labor Day and my 145th overall. This was the 23d annual Haltom Stampede, but my first. In fact, I don't recall ever visiting Haltom City, which is 12.8 miles north of my house in Fort Worth. Haltom City is in what's called the Mid-Cities area of the Metroplex, halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth and north of Interstate 30, which connects those two cities. I've just had no reason to go there.
Things didn't start off very well. I arrived early, as usual. I could see vehicles parking on a grassy area to my right and thought I should go forward and turn right into the lot. There was a police officer standing in the street, directing traffic. I thought he motioned me to go forward, so I began to accelerate. Whoa! He put his hand up and said, firmly, "Don't gun it when I tell you to stop!" (I had my window down.) He told me to turn around and go back to park, which I did. After I parked, I walked over to him and told him that I misunderstood his signal. He said it was okay. "I'm just trying not to get run over." After the race, I went out to see whether he wanted a banana, a bag of chips, or something else from inside. He said no, smiled, and thanked me. Just imagine how Brian Leiter would distort this incident to make me look bad! "Burgess-Jackson is always getting into trouble with the law; he almost ran over a police officer and never so much as apologized; then he tried to bribe the officer to keep from getting arrested."
It was cold and windy, so I wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt over my jersey. I also wore brown cotton gloves. On my warm-up run, I noticed that we would have a tailwind for the final mile. It's good to know these things so you can gauge your effort on the course. I saw quite a few of my running buddies at the race. The running community is made up of friendly people. They welcomed me into their ranks in 1996, despite the funny-looking tan lines on my legs and the farmer's tan on my arms (from wearing a cycling jersey all summer). One friend, Scott, who knows that I'll be returning to cycling in a couple of weeks, told the others that I "disappear" for six months at a time. Ha! I should talk Scott into doing bike rallies with me. He would probably enjoy it. I, personally, would not want to do the same activity all year 'round, as he does. (Don't misunderstand. I run all year 'round, but I race only from Labor Day to March.)
I had a good first mile: 6:36. Part of it was downhill, so I knew I'd have to pay for it later. The second mile was difficult. Not only was I recovering from the effort of the first mile, but it was slightly uphill and into the wind. I kept telling myself to keep the speed up, because I knew I'd be hauling ass in the third mile and wanted a good overall time. Finally, we turned south. There was a man in front of me whom I recognized. He's in my age group most of the time. (I think he's a year younger than I am, so we're in different age groups for one year and then the same age group for four.) I've never beaten him, to my recollection. In fact, I've always been amazed at how fast he runs for such a gangly guy. (Leiter: "Burgess-Jackson attacks a fellow runner.")
To my surprise, he wasn't pulling away from me, so I decided I had to beat him. The awards for this race are ceramic buffaloes (stampede; get it?), which are highly prized by runners. (Often, we get cheap medals that are little more than hunks of metal with a generic stamp of a runner on them.) I would not want to lose a trophy by a second or two. For about a mile, I was right on his heels. I didn't want him to see me, since he might know that I'm in his age group; so I bided my time. I noticed that he ran in spurts. He would surge for a couple of seconds and then ease up. I adjusted to his speed, whatever it was. (Keep in mind that I'm gasping for air all this time; it was hard.) With half a mile to go, I threw caution to the wind and roared past him. It was risky, because I could have blown before the finish. I had no idea whether he was holding anything back. (Leiter: "Burgess-Jackson exploits a suffering man.")
I ended up beating him by 19½ seconds. Evidently, he had nothing left when I surged. I caught another man as well (a 40-year-old) during this furious finish. Unfortunately, I couldn't catch a third. A man with gray hair was right in front of me. He could very well be in my age group, I thought. Sure enough, he was. I asked him after we finished (after we caught our breath!) how old he was. He said 50. Yikes! I hoped I hadn't lost a ceramic buffalo by 1.9 seconds, which is how much he beat me by.
Luckily for me, he was second and I was third. I got my prized buffalo trophy. What's ironic is that the fastest man in my age group in the entire Metroplex was at the race. Halfway in, I saw him walking. I asked him at the finish whether he was injured. He said he wasn't feeling well. Had he been healthy, he would have beaten me badly and I would have finished "off the podium." So it goes in footracing. All you can do is beat the people who show up, in the condition in which they show up. (Leiter: "Burgess-Jackson fails to render assistance to a stranded runner.")
Overall, my pace was 6:42.28. (That's chip time, on a certified 5K course. Elapsed time = 20:49.9.) My personal record for the 5K distance is 6:08.75, set on 27 November 1999. Have I lost much speed in almost 10 years? I'll let you decide. By the way, I did the final 1.107 miles today at a 6:26.65 pace. The wind helped. I finished fourth of 17 men in my age group (one of them won the grand master's trophy, so he was taken out of the age group). I was 25th overall, of 290 finishers (top 8.6%). The overall winner was Craig Lutz, a 16-year-old kid. He completed the race in 15:48. I keep track of the winners of the races in which I compete. On 24 September 2006, Lutz, who was then a mere 13, won a 5K race in a time of 16:28. He's close to breaking five minutes per mile. I wish him well. It's a long way to the top (if you wanna rock 'n' roll).
