A Christmas Story House 10K, 2013

Yesterday I ran my first 10K ever--the first A Christmas Story House 5K/10K. Alyssa, Joe, and I registered for this one several months ago. As soon as I heard about it I was in--despite promising after the Cleveland Marathon debacle that I'd never run in the city of Cleveland again. A Christmas Story is my favorite movie of all time, and that's not just misused hyperbole. I contributed to and attended the A Christmas Story House fund raiser in 2006 before the house was restored to its glory. I waited in line in the freezing cold on the morning of its grand opening in 2007. Also, we have movie memorabilia throughout our house.

25th Anniversary Edition DVD (display only copy)

Leg Lamp night light behind our liquor shelf

Lunch box with a personalized autograph from porn star Scott Schwartz (Flick)

The queen mother of curse words Christmas decorations

 Although I try to avoid spending time in Cleveland, running this race was a no-brainer. Who wouldn't run a race at which the medal is a major award?

Peep that sleeve detail!

We drove out to Cleveland on Friday night, checked into the Holiday Inn Express that was a 5-minute walk away from the starting line, watched BUGS ruin an opportunity for the MAC to get some national love and a crapload of money, then fell asleep. We awoke on Saturday morning a little after 6:00AM in order to have time to walk over to Tower City to pick up our packets, get back to the hotel to prepare for the race, then head back over to meet Alyssa at 8:30 for the 9:00 start. The A Christmas Story House Facebook page and Twitter feed had been warning that race day packet pick-up would be a mad house but we had no choice, coming from an hour and a half away and having jobs and all of that jazz. We got to the pick-up location at 7:00AM and were back to our room at 7:12; so much for all of the hullaballoo.

Joe went back to bed, but once I'm up, I'm up, so I played with my iPad until about 8:10 when Joe woke up. We attached our bibs to our clothes, which is quite a challenge in winter gear because it's all pretty nice, expensive stuff that we wear (jackets, vests, pants) that we didn't want to damage with safety pins, got dressed, and swung by the complimentary breakfast area for a little bite. I normally don't eat before races with the exception of half of a Clif bar before marathons, but it's hard for me to resist the complimentary breakfast at HIE. I had half of a cup of black coffee and half of a cinnamon bun, which are the bomb-diggity at HIE.

We met Alyssa at 8:30 in the Horseshoe Casino and stayed in there until about 8:55 to keep warm. When we went outside I was taken aback by the huge crowd waiting to start--as it turns out, there were about 4500 participants yesterday. At 9:00 we planted ourselves between the 9:00-minute mile and 8:30/mile pace groups and shortly thereafter we were off. The three of us hung together for a couple of minutes before Alyssa and I got separated from Joe. Before the end of the first mile the crowd pulled me away from Alyssa. I looked back to figure out how to get back to both of them to no avail. I finished my first mile in just under 8:00 minutes. Somehow the 8:30 pacer was right there with me. Pacers are terrible.

I mentioned that this was my first ever 10K; that said, I didn't have any expectations or plan. I figured that I was just running for fun--after all, it was a race celebrating my favorite movie of all time. Lots of runners wore pink nightmare costumes, leg lamp skirts, and cardboard boxes reading "FRAGILE." I was lame and just wore normal winter running stuff. At the turn-around for the 10K runners I realized that I was halfway to finished and felt really good maintaining a 7:30ish pace. Eventually I got stuck behind some folks who had slowed down closer to an 8:00/mile pace and I wasn't able to get through or around them--almost the entire road was filled with runners and walkers still on their way out to the 5K point. It was the first of two things that annoyed me about the race. Why weren't there cones dividing the road for those heading back downtown for the 10K? Whatever the case, I didn't let it upset me. In fact, it felt nice to run at a leisurely pace.

Then came the coup de gras--the bridge of Black Bart, erm, black ice death. At about mile 5 a cop directed us onto the sidewalk of a bridge. The sidewalk was covered in black ice. We all formed a single-file line on the outside of the sidewalk, but eventually even that was ice. About halfway across there was some snow accumulated over the ice in the middle of the sidewalk, so I opted to run on that to gain a little traction. I had slowed to about an 8:30/mile pace just to keep myself upright. I slipped a few times, but never bit it nor did I ever feel like I was going down. Even after the bridge the brick sidewalk was iced over. I managed to pass a few people at that point who were running slower, safer, and probably smarter than I. That entire stretch was my other least-favorite part of the race.

I looked down at my Garmin at mile 5.85. I felt really good so I thought about picking it up and making up for the time I lost slowing down on the bridge, but I told myself to wait until I was at six miles where I was just high-tail it.

I could hear the announcer at the finish. I thought, "Wow, that's really echoing loudly around the corner," assuming that I still needed to run all the way back to Public Square since I was only at about 6 miles. And then before I knew it, there was the start and the mats to read our chips.

"Why would they leave those out?"

I guess I'm dumb or oblivious or something. Or my Garmin was way off. At only 6.15 miles, those start mats were also the finish mats. I finished the race and didn't even realize it. And I was bummed that I didn't run hard at all.

Official time: 47:52, good for 8th in my age group.

Post-chocolate milk. I don't drink Ovaltine.

Joe finished less than a minute after me and Alyssa followed soon thereafter. We grabbed our major awards, I chugged a choclate milk, Alyssa stole an entire bag of bagels, and we were finished.

Overall I had a good time. It was an easy race and a nice route. I didn't even mention how fun it was to run past the A Christmas Story house at about the 5K mark, but I have been there so much in the past that I guess I wasn't thinking too much about it. 

I learned a lot running my first 10K and I look forward to running more. Likewise I plan to be back in Cleveland for this race next year, which I'm certain they'll do because it had a huge turnout--thousands of runners! Hopefully next year the city will better prepare the sidewalks. I mean, come on--a December race in Cleveland with a 9:00AM start and you didn't have enough time to throw down some friggin' salt? That's enough complaining about Cleveland, though.

What could have made this race better? Sending us all home with a Red Ryder 200-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. Yeah, I said it.