Gator gallop 5k

I ran in the Gator Gallop 5k last night. What made it even better was that my lovely wife and daughter were able to run it too. This was actually daughter Carrie's first 5k, and she did great! She had a giant kick at the end and with some experience will be beating me in no time.

I forgot to see how many total runners there were - I would guess maybe a little over 100. Carrie got 54th with a time of 31:45. Jane was 3 spots behind her (57) in 32:11. I got 36th in a time of 27:45. Carrie and Jane both received trophies for being 3rd in their respective age groups (20-29 and 40-49). I was proud of them both.

I had heard this was a short course, but Jane and Carrie's phones both said it was 3.24 miles. I was hoping to do better than I did, so I'm blaming it on the extra .14 miles. :) I couldn't get my gps watch to work because the memory was full, so I just had a stopwatch to go by.

This was maybe not the greatest course. We started at the St. Aloysius Church on Bluffton Road (Yoder), and just ran south to Hamilton Rd, took a left, ran down and turned around and back to the church. Plus part of Hamilton is gravel. The gravel was more difficult to run on than I thought it would be. It didn't help that there was a nasty breeze on the way back either. But it was a beautiful night for a late July run. It rained about an hour before the 7 pm race and was about 65f. Having never run a night race before I was worried it was going to be hot, but it was actually the opposite.

On a side note: Carrie's next door neighbor is the race director. This was the 13th year. Proceeds went towards technology upgrades at the St. Al's school. I will plan to do this race next year - if I am still around.