Camp Fire Chicken Run 5K Race Report

The first race of the weekend was the Camp Fire Chicken Run in Cleburne on late Friday afternoon, April 25, with a 6:30 p.m. start.

The race was hosted at Lowell Smith Middle School and had a 1-mile kids' run that preceeded it.

I finished getting my hours in for the week very early and had an appointment at my alma mater that got cancelled.  Therefore, I was in the area way early.

I picked my packet up at the race site, changed clothes in an off-the-main building locker room and still had plenty of time to wait.

I always cut community races - as this one was - some slack with race "formalities", such as announcements, etc.

I think as long as you can get a race started on-time, you're still OK.

The only "criticism" with this event - and some others that I've done - is that the race director needs to be free from doing detail items in the last hour of an event so they can be free to make the decisions necessary to get an event started on time.

The volunteers at this event were absolutely super.  Every intersection was pretty well-covered and they had one water stop at the turnaround point.

The course was an out-and-back with some slight rollers.

Mapmyrun.com stated that the course had an ascent of almost 115 feet.  Whatever it was, it felt like more.

As we made a right out of the parking lot, we climbed 39 feet in two-tenths of a mile.  Nice.

We kept proceeding on Country Club Road until reaching Harvest Hill Road where we headed to the south -- and down some rollers that we'd have to head back up.

Mile 1 came through at 10:05.49.

There was a little dog-leg right and then left on to Lakeshore Drive, which was just to the east of Lake Pat Cleburne.

I went 5:31.42 to the turnaround for 15:36.91 at the half way point.

And another 5:01.58 to the two-mile marker for a second mile of 10:33-even.

The inclines on Harvest Hill took their toll, especially with feeling the afternoon heat (80 degrees ... hottest it has been for awhile).

I thought to myself during that stretch, "It wasn't this warm last Saturday morning in Holidaysburg, Pennsylvania running that 5K with Waverly!"

Making the right-hand turn back on to Country Club, we had a half mile before we hit the down hill and I thought I could make up a little time, but it wasn't to be.

Mile 3 was 10:48.58 and the last tenth of a mile was 1:01.11.  Ugh.  That's a 10-minue per mile pace.  I usually can gut it out faster at the end, no matter what.

So 32:41.52 minus 13.34 offset and that comes in at 32:28.18.  Yikes.

I checked with a guy - after the race - that was wearing a GPS device on his wrist and he said that he had 3.17 miles -- and there really wasn't any place that would obstruct the reading nor any place to do a lot of weaving around.

It is possible if the turnaround spot was put out just a little bit beyond where it should have been.

Who knows?  The bottom line is that it was a race in my 94th Texas city or town.

If you're interested, here's the link on MapMyRun.

Official results by Cox Racing Services haven't been posted yet.