Final Notes on Last Weekend's 8K CC Race

I did the USATF MN Cross Country Championship 8K CC race last weekend out at Gale Woods Farm, and it was brutal. Here are 4 final notes:

• ONE: I thought a friendly group of women out there were cheering for me, but they were cheering for someone else. I'd run past and they'd say "Looking good YOU!!" And I thought it was a sweet and generic way to cheer for someone whose name they didn't know. But then a DIFFERENT group said something like that as well. In the results, I placed 2 spots in front of a man named Yu Wu. So they were all cheering for "Yu" out there and not "you" (AKA: me). D'oh. Ha!

• TWO: I "settled in" to the race after less than a minute, and then I only passed one person after that. No one passed me, and I passed no one else. And in my race report where I noted wanting to pass this person at about mile 1.5, I noted someone coming up behind me at that point as well. I think that was Yu from the first point above.

• THREE: Cross country races as SO MUCH EASIER on my body! I went out for a very normal run yesterday, and forgot ALL about my previous run being a race... because my body felt totally normal. I might be doing more running on grass as I get older... my splits will suffer, but my body will thank me!

• FOUR: The results show no ages, but I did some digging to see how I fared against others in my age group. From glacing at the age group awards list just after the race, I knew I was 5th out of 7 in my age group, but that info is no where in the online results. So I went to Mtec Results because you can search by name for results (and they do a lot of the local races like Victory, Brian Kraft, and the TC 10 Mile / Marathon until the last year or 2), and I found everyone who did the race except for 2 names. Here's some of what I found:

- The VAST MAJORITY of the 28 runners in front of me were in their mid-20s to lower-30s. Babies. :)

- Brian D who finished 2 spots in front of me (who I chased ALL race) was the first finisher older than that (besides the few in their lower 40s from my age group), and he's 51! I didn't realize he was that old! As I was trying to chase him, I was afraid he was in my age group (40-44).

- And the guy right behind me (between me and Yu) was 62!! So we had 51, 44, and 62 year olds finishing within 4 spots of one another after all younger finisher in front of us (except for 4 men in the lower 40s in my age group).

- I finished 29th (31:46), and in my age group, the finishers were 9th (28:09), 11th (28:21), 16th (29:08), and 18th (29:51) in front of me. So I was 2 minutes behind the nearest in my age group, and over 2.5 mins from earning a medal! That's a gap! (And then the remaining 2 in my age group were 34th [32:59] over a minute behind me, and 40th [36:02].)

• FIVE: There's PLENTY of elevation change out there! My "normal" 5+ mile loop along the river (which has small rollers and a big climb back up from the river) has about 180 feet of elevation change. This hilly 8K had 3x the elevation change with 549 feet:

It was a cheap fun race, and I'm glad I did it! I only wish I could have walked away with some hardware like I did 2 years ago. If you missed it, here's my 2025 race report from a few days ago.

Back with some "Friday Funnies" tomorrow!