When: Saturday, September 17, 12:00 noon

Where: Denton, TX at the UNT XC course

Why: I had never run a cross country race before, and this one was $15 and had a t-shirt. Why not?

As you might have guessed, a race at noon in Texas in the middle of September is not going to be a great time. The reason it started so late was that this race also served as the Ken Garland Invitational, and our race was preceded by collegiate, high school and middle school races, which started at 8:00 in the morning.

I got to the race an hour before it started, hoping to have ample time to warm up and scope out the course before lining up and having a fantastic cross country debut.

What actually happened was that I parked really far away from the course, and trudged half a mile from my car to the course with my overburdened race bag only to not be able to find the packet pickup. It was supposed to be at the start/finish line, but the race was not a closed loop, and therefore the start line was not the same as the finish line. I found the start line with relative ease. The finish line escaped me until I ran into the race director, who walked me over to packet pickup.

She must have seen my ARTC singlet and assumed I was fast, because she started talking about the prizes for the race. I tried to temper expectations, given that it was absurdly hot out (and also that I am not actually all that fast), but she was very encouraging. I got my packet and decided to start warming up.

The thing about warming up is that it’s not all that beneficial when it’s already 90º out. I did it anyway, and I’m glad I did, because I had a horrible cramp or stitch in my abs from a total of 20 seconds of planks during the previous night’s yoga. (Planking is definitely not the core workout for me.) I managed to get that mostly worked out as the middle school boys were finishing their races and I plodded around the outskirts of the course. By the time I got back to my bag near the start line, I was absolutely soaked in sweat. It was so bad that a woman watching the race asked me how I had done in the race, thinking that I had already done my racing. Yeesh.

As I waited for the race to begin, I started talking with some of the other people who were going to suffer through this thing with me. Many of them were family members of the people actually on the UNT track team, and most were from Denton. They were surprised that I had driven all the way up from Dallas. I noticed that there weren’t a ton of people running this race, presumably because they were much smarter than the group of us that lined up at the start.

The gun went off and we were all off. A couple of former UNT track guys immediately took the lead while the rest of us were practically standing still in comparison to their speedy departures. I went out with a guy and a girl that seemed to be in my general skill level. Despite the punishing heat I’d felt in my warmup, the first mile was going fairly well. I was only off my PR pace by about ten seconds when I hit the 1K mark. Right about then, everything fell apart.

It was so hot. As soon as we got out of the treed area, and the sun found its way to me, I started feeling as if I were plodding through mud, despite the course being dry as a bone. The small but ever-present hills posed more of an issue than I expected, and so much of the course lacked any respite from the midday sun that I lost any hope of a reasonable time by the end of the first mile. Each glance at my watch seemed to show a slower pace than the last, though it did seem to bottom out in the high 8:00s. Starting the second loop, the girl that I had set out with made a wrong turn and I passed her and didn’t see her again until the finish line. I ended up reeling the guy in a few minutes later and was feeling pretty good about that until I got passed by a guy I think was one of the coaches of the UNT XC team.

After about two miles, the goal was simply to finish without walking, which has not been on my goal list for quite a while. I wasn’t familiar with the course, so every turn seemed to lead to new untold horrors (literally anything but the finish line) and it never seemed like it was going to end. Eventually that beautiful inflatable finishing chute was in front of me. I summoned everything I had for a finishing kick and came up with absolutely nothing. Still, I finished the race.

As I moved through the chute, the RD handed me a swag bag, and I figured it was just because they had a lot of extra stuff, given the low turnout for the races. Once I had regained my wits about me, I saw that the bag was actually for the third overall female finisher, which was incredibly surprising, given how poorly I felt I had done in the race. I am not one to turn down free t-shirts, though. Perhaps ironically, my worst 5K finish time since early 2015 was my best overall performance at a race to date.

I threw on one of my new t-shirts when I got in the car because my singlet was soaked through and made my way to Pizza Snob on the Square. I ordered my usual (street taco pizza without the pork) and ate half the pizza in about two minutes, saving the other half (and the extra pizza I took to go) for dinner and the next day’s post-long run fuel.

Overall, the race was great. There was nothing the race directors could have done about the heat, and it’s not like they could bump the teams actually competing for schools for us. Despite how miserable the race was, the experience was great, the people were great, and I am very glad that this race happens annually. I’m looking forward to going back next year, hopefully with a better performance.