2015 Loony Challenge Results

Here's the top of the standings from last weekend's Loony Challenge:

This year, they opened the Loony Challenge up to a few more runners. Of the 550 that registered, 448 did all 3 events. (Last year it was 391 finishers out of 500 registered.) Here's how I stacked up:

- 3rd fastest 10K
- 3rd fastest 5K
- 3rd fastest 10 Mile
- 3rd out of 448 overall
- 1st out of 21 in the 30-34 age group

My "age-graded" results are all quite similar. (If you haven't heard of age grading, it bases your finish time on a percentage of the best possible time for your age and sex [higher is better]. You will slow down as you get older, but maybe you're slowing down SLOWER than others and actually running better.) Generally, 60-69% is "local class," and 70-79% is "regional class," and I finished all my races right between those two classes:

69% age-graded 10K
69% age-graded 5K
70% age-graded 10 Mile

So anyway, as you can see at the top, Evan and I weren't even battling for the top spot. This Christopher MacLeod fella put up some pretty fantastic results: those numbers would be my 10K PR, just 9 seconds off my 5K PR, and my 2nd fastest 10 Mile time out of 7 races. He left a pretty big gap between himself and Evan and I (and everyone else). Evan commented something to the effect that he was surprised more "fast" people didn't do this challenge, and I'm kinda surprised too. I bet this will draw more fast people next year. Here's Evan's final thought of the weekend:

Always a fun, different race experience. Fun racing you, Evan!

Based on the results above, Evan and I were close, but as you know, he beat me in ever race: 0:01 in the 10K, 0:02 in the 5K, and 0:14 in the 10 Mile. I watched my "finish line video" clips, and you can see how close we were all weekend. These are all video stills:

Finishing the 10K just feet apart
(with the "finish tape" being brought out behind me for the lead female).


Finishing the 5K JUST in front of Evan, but he'd started behind me, so this equals a 0:02 loss for me.


10 Mile (1 of 3): Evan had finished just 10 seconds before this,
and you can see him mulling around in the lower right.


(2 of 3) You can still see Evan's shoulder in the lower right
as I enter the frame to the far left to finish 0:14 behind him.


(3 of 3) I still hadn't seen Evan - I was just wiping my nose. Gross.

If you want to watch my three 0:08 video clips of me (and Evan) finishing these 3 races (which are incredibly thrilling), use these links:10K, 5K, and 10 Mile.

Finally, I had 6 goals for the Loony Challenge (that I posted here), and I wanted to see how many I could hit. I ended up getting 3 of them, and I'm totally fine with that:

• FIRST: finish all 3 races. CHECK! My heels held up for 2 days of racing. Barely.

• SECOND: try to win the series. Nope.

• THIRD: try to keep my times close to last year's. I'll say CHECK! I was 0:07 faster in the 10K, 0:16 slower in the 5K, and 0:31 slower in the 10 Mile. That's pretty close.

• FOURTH: sub-2:02:00 series finish. CHECK!

• FIFTH: sub-2:00:00 like last year. Nope.

• SIXTH: race PR of sub-1:59:52. Nope.

Here's my TC 10K and 5K race reports, and here's my TC 10 Mile race report. We'll see if Pharmie and I decided to race the series again next year. It's fun, but it's also quite a commitment!