Race Recap - The Race that Got Stopped by a Train - Stars & Stripes 5K

I'm FINALLY getting around to recapping the race that I participated in LAST Wednesday night.  

Poppy is always near and wanted in on the pic action

The Stars & Stripes 5K is a 2nd year race here in Memphis at Tiger Lane at the Liberty Bowl Stadium.  It began last year when the very popular Firecracker 5K, that was held at the Racquet Club, ceased to exist.  This was my first year running it and I thought the race was put together very well except for one thing.......

Yep - that's a train in the middle of a race - at .4 miles into it.  I would say that between 1/3 and 1/2 of the runners managed to beat the train.  I, unfortunately, was one that did not.  I will say that there were some insane people that went under and around the barriers right as the train was getting to the road we were on. 

Once that happened, I decided to just enjoy the run as there was no way a PR was going to happen. The weather was actually pretty cool for a July Memphis night.  It was a relatively flat course that was essentially a big square.  The start and finish were both at the Liberty Bowl.  After the delay by the train, we turned on Southern and headed to the Cooper Young area where there were several people cheering us on during their dinners at the local restaurants there.  We ran up to Central Ave and turned there to smell Central BBQ then head back to the Liberty Bowl for the finish.  After the finish there were plenty of hamburgers and hotdogs to go around.....and watermelon!!

My "official" race time was 40:49.  No where near a PR, but if the train hadn't interrupted us it would have been as my "moving" time was exactly 8 minutes faster than my official time!  My current 5K PR is 34:15, I believe, so I'm definitely making progress towards my goal of at 30min 5K.

Here are my race stats:

Overall 852/1399 (61%)

Gender 353/765 (46%)

Age Group 74/150 (49%)

I'll take that - especially considering that 2.7 miles were essentially a nice, easy training run!!

I'll be back later today with my Workout/Weigh In Wednesday!

~Kathryn