More From the USATF MN Indoor Championships

I've got 6 quick things to report post-race:

• FIRST: I left my shoulder "sticker" on for an hour after I got home, and it left a little red mark on my arm when I took it off at noon. When I showered before bed at 10 pm, a big red mark caught my eye. Oops:

• SECOND: I was LEGITIMATELY concerned that I'd fall out of the short yellow shorts! After I did a few warm-up laps (which felt "breezy" down there), I walked to the far back corner of the fieldhouse (back by the old bathrooms if you're familiar) and poked around down there a bit. The inner pouch was still relatively intact, so I deemed it "safe enough" to continue. Whew. These tiny 1970s-esque track shorts have a limited life, that's for sure!

• THIRD: The results show me picking up a place after the 22nd lap, but I don't recall passing anyone. (As I noted in my race report, once we got settled in after maybe just 50 meters, we pretty much stayed in the same place all race.) It turns out someone who was 8 seconds ahead of me with 3 or 4 laps to go dropped out. Yikes. He was running 0:37-0:39 laps (when I was running 0:41-0:42) until around 2200 meters when he creeped into the 40s. And then his last 3 laps before he DNFed were 0:48, 0:50, and 0:52 - so he ran a 5:12 opening mile, but then ran his last 800 meters at 6:34 pace (with his last full lap at 7:03 pace). Dang. His pace just before dropping out was 2:00/mile slower than how he started the race. At 2200 meters, he was 0:33 ahead of me, but on his last full lap, he was only 0:08 ahead of me.

Results by lap showing me picking up a place at 4400 meters.

• FOURTH: Related to that, being it was a 5000 on a 200 meter track, I lapped or was lapped by everyone but 3 of the other 14 people in my race. One of those was the guy above who didn't finish (so I suppose I TECHNICALLY lapped him 3 times being he dropped out with 3 laps left), and the other 2 finished ahead of me on the same lap in 17:18 and 17:30 (that's 0:21 and 0:09 ahead of me). But as I noted in my race report, I did NOT feel close to these guys - 9 seconds still seems SO FAR AWAY on a 200 meter track. The leaders passed me a number of times, 3rd-5th all passed me once, and only those 2 guys in front of me (in 6th and 7th) were on the same lap as me. And then everyone behind me I passed a number of times (9th place [the person who finished right behind me] finished over 2 minutes behind me, so I finished 2.5 laps ahead of him).

• FIFTH: There was one other DNF that I THINK might have been accidental. When I was finishing my race, I was announced as a "FINISHER" when I came to the line with 1 lap left. I would have LOVED to have been done, but I knew I had another lap, so I kept going. (And I was right.) There's someone else in the results who "officially" DNFed with 1 lap to go, and I have to think that the same thing happened to him, only he stopped when he was told he was done. If that's the case, that stinks:

There should be numbers in the far right box. And his splits
show he was kicking, so maybe he was off on his count as well.

• SIXTH: Two people recognized me after the race. First was one of the people I passed a few times (the only female in the 5000). She said she realized who I was mid-race. Apparently she was in better-than-normal shape for the TC 10 Mile a few years back and ran near this guy in pink plaid shorts that she thought was me. NEWS FLASH: it WAS me. She liked all the cheers I got for those shorts (and I like that too!). And one of the people working the meet (who gave me my arm and hip sticker) asked "do you do triathlons? I used to always read your blog!" She also laughed at me before she recognized me when I came BACK to her table just after getting my stickers saying "ummm... this is my first legitimate track meet since high school... do I need to do anything else? Am I 'cleared' to race?" She loved that.

(And I forgot until now that I did the USATF MN Masters Outdoor Championship in 2019, so I guess it was not my first legitimate track meet since high school.)

Here's my race report from last week if you missed it!