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Not that I'm counting or anything.
Race season is well underway, and I had my second race in as many weekends this month on Sunday. This one I wrote about a year ago but I'll brief you on the details:
It was the Let's Move Apopka 10K- we ran it in 2014 to get a POT for PHM Weekend earlier this year.
I was the first female finisher with a rather underwhelming 54ish minute finish time but hey, it was the first race I'd ever actually placed, won, whatever, so I was thrilled.
All the winners got little trophies, the age group winners were good but the overall winner trophies were broken so the Polish guy that came in first and I both had to go home empty handed, with the promise of it being fixed and mailed to us.
Around December, I got to thinking how I never heard anything back from the race director and I sent an email checking up on it.
I never got a response.
I occasionally bitched about not getting my little award, but only with a smile because hey, I know I won! Secretly I was still a bit disappointed though. Over this past spring and summer, I actually got 3 more placement awards- 2nd and 3rd place overall female, and 2nd in my age group. But still, the missing first place award could not join the others.
Finally, toward the end of the summer after the race director posted a Facebook page update on the 2015 race, I queried about last year in a comment.
And then things really picked up!
I got messages, apologies, phone calls, and a free race entry to this year's 10K. They were very nice about it, and couldn't have been more apologetic. I was gracious, thanked them for getting back with me on the matter, and took them up on the free entry.
And then I started freaking out.
I HAD to win again! It would be the only way I could make up for not having recognition for my first place 2014 win!
I didn't sleep well in the 2 nights leading up to the race. My stomach was in knots and I was under so much pressure I could barely even focus on anything. I got to the 7th Day Adventist church in Apopka in time to pick up my packet and try to calm down. I posted about my significantly elevated stress level in the Team #rundisney page and everyone's words of encouragement and support really helped me and gave me a good distraction before the race kicked off.
The course was the same as the year before- around an elementary school and eventually down and back a bike trail. Back again was this awful pedestrian bridge with a steep zig zag path to go over a busy highway.
I'll spare the details because it's not super interesting- I started out at the gun in about 4th place overall for the women before eventually moving up to 2nd and then falling back into 4th. I never had a chance. The first place woman ended up finishing in like 48 minutes, and I've never run a sub-50 minute 10K before. I was watchful of the women I passed, and then even more so of the women who ended up passing me after about 4 miles. I'd already decided there was no way I was going to win so I focused on at least winning my age group. One woman who passed me was much older- closer to 50 than 30-34. The other girl who passed me later on looked almost my age but could have been younger. I crossed my fingers and hoped she was in her 20s and just kept moving along.
I held on to 4th place for the women but that didn't mean a thing. I finished in 53:01, grabbed my banana, and headed back to my car for some Powerade. I felt ok, not exausted, not excited, just... neutral. What I really wanted was to find the overall men's finisher, Fredison Costa. Fredison was the winner of the Walt Disney World Marathon this year and actually showed up to race this little 10K in Apopka! He finished the race with a 6 minute mile and get this- he took a wrong turn while he was in a far off lead and made an extra lap around another couple blocks before finding the rest of us. He cranked it into higher gear and STILL WON. He probably would have been 3 or 4 minutes faster if he hadn't done that but holy crap!
See what I'm holding there? I won first place in my age group! Yay!!! Vindication!
As I was fixing to leave, I stopped to say hello and thank you to the church pastor, Andrew Moreno. He'd called me in regards to last year's award and was super nice about it and for arranging my free entry this year. We chatted for a bit, I was all smiles with my age group win when he told me to wait one second, he would be right back...
WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT!!! The 7th Day Adventist folks had gone and had a little plaque made for me (he had 2 boxes, one was the other for the Polish guy winner as well) to make up for last year's broken trophy debacle. I was shocked, grateful, and amazed. I told him I'd been also speaking to Cayce, she worked the race as well and had been instrumental in getting things set right. He introduced us, it turned out she'd been the one to take the photo above of Fredison and myself! We chatted for a bit but then I had to head out. I walked away feeling validated, happy, grateful for such a good group of people, and most of all- relieved! There was always a little part of my race history that felt incomplete and now everything is as it should be!
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