Where do I start?
Even though I'm not running for much better time despite losing some weight and inches, I still look every week as to where I can go run -- and usually take in a sporting event of some kind.
Honestly, for Saturday, I spotted a race up in Hughes Springs (east Texas) where I could have combined a baseball game at Wiley College in Marshall, but I just didn't feel like driving that far this weekend.
So, there was this Peeps race close to where my daughter lives, and while it was sold out, I really don't do "concept" races, as I like to call them.
Green 6.2? A hard no. $15 race day packet pickup? Enough said.
Robby's prices with the Yuri's Night Fun Run are a lot more reasonable. I'm not a $40 5K fan, but for a 10K, I can respect, plus Lauren Stroud's RAS Ambassador discount, that made it $35.
However, my main reason for running it was that I could count Nassau Bay as my 210th city, town or census-designated place (think New Caney) to run a race in in Texas.
Now technically, I've run there before.
The initial, local Easter weekend race when I started to run in '0-something was the Resurrection Run 5K, out of the Gloria Deo Lutheran Church and produced by Jay Lee and Kevin and Jana Landry.
The mailing address for the church is Houston, but the race is entirely within the city limits of Nassau Bay.
So I never added it, which would have forced me to renumber everything, therefore, it was Yuri's Night for today.
It is amazing that it is a race that has been going on since 2004 and was started by a good friend, Sarah Graybeal.
I might have helped out one year after meeting Sarah as part of our Houston Running Bloggers group and I know I ran with Waverly in 2007 when the race was still in Webster.
Sarah turned it over to Mana Vautier and he pulled me into announce it for him in 2015 (even though he had assumed the race a few years earlier) and the last year was in 2017, a year in which I believe Robby Sabban had taken it over.
I had ended my involvement with Robby's group after the Baytown Bud Heat Wave in 2017 and before this morning, had only run one other RAS race since then.
In December 2017, I was going to run La Porte By The Bay Half Marathon with Ken Johnson, but he got sick and couldn't make it.
I ended up running a good bit of it with a friend at that time, who, by surprise, I actually saw this morning.
Was up early and made it to Nassau Bay at about 6:45 a.m., which gave me plenty of time to be ready for the 7:30 a.m. race start.
I shocked a few people at packet pickup, including Susan Bell and Terri Frank. I had seen Susan at races over the years so I gave her a good ribbing over that.
One of Richard Campbell's sons, the timer, saw me and came up and said "Hello!" and I was walked towards the start line I saw Penn State grad David Leach setting up a speaker to make announcements from.
It is always good to see David. As we chatted for awhile, I told him that I don't believe that I had ever asked him from where in Pennsylvania he was from and he told me Titusville and I told him in kind that I was born in Altoona but from Tyrone.
He remarked that his first four and a half years of employment was in Tyrone as he worked for a chemical company there. It's always good to know people who know where your home is, especially when you are not physically close to it at the present.
Kids race got started and finished and we got the 5K and 10K started right on time.
The Yuri's Night course has a ton of turns - lots more than last Saturday's race in Morgan's Point Resort. A little bit before the mile 2 mark, the 10K participants stay to the left and run out into the middle of Nassau Bay and Clear Creek - and the Nassau Bay Peninsula Wildlife Park.
All of my years I had never been on the piece of land.
Before that, as we hit the mile 1 marker, I came up behind Theresa Pearsall and remarked about how stupid I was being as I pulled off an 8:40.57 first mile. The marker had to be off.
Mile two came in at 10:17.16 for a two-mile mark of 18:58.13 -- 9:29 per, which would have been a 58:55 10K. Got to see Jay Lee at the point where the courses split. Hadn't seen Jay in forever.
The third mile, which was completely on a mixed trail surface, was 10:04.19 for 29:02.32.
On the return and before we came back together to get back on the road course, I finished mile four in 10:24.07 and saw a former acquaintance Alison Smith walking with a friend.
Mile five was 10:18.70 and I could tell that I didn't have a lot in the tank, but I was holding steady time-wise.
I guess proof though that the mile markers were a little wonky was that in between the mile 5 marker on the 10K course and the 2 mile marker on the 5K course, which should be a tenth of a mile, my time was 1:58. Just no way. Something was off somewhere.
The sixth mile - that I thought was never going to end - was in 10:15.68, but the last two tenths of a mile was in 3:25.28. It really should have only been two minutes.
Good effort nonetheless.
I lingered for just a little bit, talking to David for a couple of more minutes, as I had a breakfast date with my daughter.
I went over to say "Hello!" to Richard and his wife, and he told me that I had taken third in my age group. I thought briefly about staying, but time with my daughter is/was the most important.
While I appreciate Robby's and his team's efforts, I don't run races for swag.
I might have once or twice in the early days (think the sweatshirts that the CHM used to give out in the oughts), and there might be some things that I still have that I think are cool, but there's nothing that I want other than to fill my time - going about life - well.
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