First we drove down to the finish area and parked for free like many other people. We were running a little late.
We hopped on the SEPTA Broad Street Line to get to the race starting line. It was funny, the subway was completely packed with runners. We were all waiting on the left platform, but the train came on the right. So we all ran to the right as fast as we could to try to get in front of everyone else to make sure we would get on the train. Once we all packed in, the woman on the loudspeaker said “express train arriving on the other track.” So we all unloaded and ran over to the other train as fast as we could, hoping not to be one of the few who wouldn’t make it on either train.
After about 30 minutes, crammed in the subway with other runners, we arrived at the station near the start line. It was 8:30am and the race started at 8:30am. I ran up and through the streets and ran through the start line. And that is how I began the 2008 Broad Street Run.
I didn’t have a watch, but my goal was to run the ten-mile race in less than 1 hour and 10 minutes (less than 7 minutes/mile). When I passed mile marker 1, the clock said 11:11. In retrospect, I can see that I ran the first mile in 6:15, but at the time I just used the 11:11 to base off of for when I got to the other mile markers.
I had planned to look for someone to pace myself off of. Around mile two or three, I spotted someone who was running about my pace and so I locked onto him and followed his lead. After a while we started talking. His name was Hans and he was a professor from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The last time he ran a ten mile race, he ran it in 1:10.
And that’s about it. We ran together, pacing off of each other, for the rest of the race. Hans broke away at about mile 9.5 and I couldn’t keep up with him. He crossed the finish with a clock time of 01:12:15 and mine was 01:12:26. I was surprised, afterwards, to see that I had beat him on chip time by 24 seconds.
Philiph Koech won the race with a time of 46:22 - which is just over 4:30/mile.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 11:44 pm and is filed under misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.