Schlotzsky's Bun Run

I've not run in Austin before, so this was a treat. There were over 1200 timed runners and thousands more untimed run/walkers for this event sponsored by Schlotzsky's. They gave away all the potato chip bags you could carry, I especially enjoy their cracked pepper or salt and vinegar flavors. I ran pretty well today, considering I had gotten little sleep the night before. We were camping at the Old Settlers Music Festival in Driftwood, and there was some picking and fiddling going on in the campground most of the night. More importantly it was terribly humid, but fortunately it was overcast, so the weather was a little better than the Resurrection Run 5k Easter Weekend.

The Bun Run starts right outside the really nice RunTex store on the Lamar St Bridge. Overall the course is a net downhill since one starts at the crest of the bridge, then run into downtown Austin, take a left down Cesear Chavez for a while, and return somewhat uphill back over the bridge and down to the finish. I was concerned going out that the return would be pretty rough for me on the uphills, but it wasn't too bad. I took the first mile in 7:10, reached mile two in 14:40 and finished in 22:51 for 228th place overall. This is my second fastest 5k time, so I was pleased.

When we were warming up before the race, we saw the eventual winner, Bernard Manirakiza, warming up along Town Lake as well. I did not know him, but watching him run you know he is fast. Indeed his 5k time was 14:58, a whopping 51 seconds ahead of Greg McMillan in second place. There is a nice race report on RunTex linked here. They even say this is not an easy course, which makes me feel even better about my time.

As usual, the awards for the Clydesdales was confusing. They had an open Clydesdale category for all ages, which I registered for. When I looked at my posted time, it said #1 in my group column. So I thought I had won. But then I studied the earlier runners and there were some folks that seemed in my group that had asterisks in their group column. So I figured that since there were three of those, they took the top three Clydesdale places. But I hung around for the awards ceremony after all as I enjoy seeing the winners. In this run there were wheelchair and K-9 winners. There was also one woman who won at age 80 and three male winners in their 80's. Wow. Lo and behold they call the third place Clydesdale name and he has a slower time than me, I was now totally confused. They called my name for first place, so I went up, got some applause, got a certificate, had my picture taken, and they said they would send me a medal. Ceremony over, off to the world's largest Whole Foods Market for shopping and back to Houston.

Got back to Houston, went on line to check the results on ITR, and they show me fourth Clydesdale afterall. Weird. Maybe I can be the Frank Abagnale Jr of running (he was the con man who passed himself off as various professionals in the 60's as seen in the movie 'Catch Me If You Can'). This is like the Bayou City Classic, who also had a Clydesdale category and also messed it up. In that case, I should have gotten announced for third open per the final posted results, did not get announced for anything, ended up getting a plaque after the fact for third masters. My advice to all race directors. Don't have a Clydesdale/Athena category, it will only be a headache. When you do have one, it is too tempting to me to register. I will need to lose another 20 pounds and take me out of awards contention for good!

OK enough foolishness, time to do some training. Then win one fair and square some day. Or not.