I ran in the Rat Race 10K trail run with NGM. It was in Wells Mills Park in Waretown, NJ. Getting there was a breeze, just hopped on the Parkway to exit 69. It was nice not having to spend as much time in a car as the last few races I’ve run in.
The weather wasn’t as kind as the car ride over. It was freezing out. I know that March can be quite a fickle month weather wise, but I wasn’t expecting such a cold day when we signed up. Oh well, I was a bit more bundled up and ready to go.
There were probably about 300 or so people there and we all gathered around the start line. The organizer’s son treated us to a Japanese song that he sang for all the recent earthquake and tsunami victims. He was very much into and excited about his performance and it was most amusing and a great start to our race.
The race itself was a really nice trail. I was thrilled to be running in the soft sandy soil of the pine barrens. The past couple of races have been on some mean rocks and have been taking their toll on my old man knees and lower back. The trails were great, with some very cool planks covering some water parts.
I finished with a time of 38:29. This would have been a personal best by a half hour at least and meant that I was an incredibly fast human being. However, 60 or so of us runners had apparently taken a wrong turn on one of the trails and ran more of a 6K than the actual 10K. We were disqualified from the race and the looks of the first group of legit racers when they saw all of us already at the finish line was great.
There was a free lunch afterwards that we drove to. I ate an entire basket of cheesy poofs just because they were there and we left before eating there. We drove to the Ocean Breeze Diner which was nearby and got a yummy lunch.
Even though I ran the wrong way and was disqualified from the race, it was still a really good time. I think I’ll have to go back and run there again, it seemed like a really nice park.