Race Day

This morn­ing I ran the Sur­vivor Har­bor 7. It’s a great course around Bal­ti­more Har­bor, and took us around Fort McHen­ry, around the Inner Har­bor, past Fells Point and fin­ish­ing in Can­ton. The day was per­fect: sun­ny and about 60 degrees. I don’t have the offi­cial time yet, but by my watch I ran the sev­en miles in 1:05:35.

My splits show a great deal of vari­a­tion in my pace. I start­ed out a bit fast, get­ting car­ried along by the flow of the pack. The first mile was about 8:30. I slowed on each suc­ces­sive mile and end­ed up run­ning mile 4 in 10:30. But then I knew I was clos­er to the end than the fin­ish, so I gave it a lit­tle more ener­gy and so my pace quick­ened pro­gres­sive­ly until the sev­enth and final mile, done in 9:05.

A great run, but I have a gripe. For our $35 reg­is­tra­tion fee (on top of which I added $10 for the race’s char­i­ty host) we got just the race. No fin­ish­er medal­lion, no t‑shirt (I bought a t‑shirt for $10… not going to run a race with­out tak­ing home my tro­phy, even if I have to pay for it) not even a fin­ish­er rib­bon, which even my run­ning club’s week­ly races can afford to hand out with a $3 race fee ($5 for non-mem­bers). Yes, we each got a bag of schwag, but come on. Every­thing in the bag is free from com­pa­nies who want us to try their stuff. OK, this isn’t pre­cise­ly true: The race bag did con­tain a pair of socks with the name of the event on it. But here’s the thing: I know these races take orga­ni­za­tion and raise funds for impor­tant caus­es, but I could have run that course yes­ter­day for free. If I’m pay­ing a race fee, I deserve some token trin­ket to prove I was there. If that race fee is over $20, there’d bet­ter be a T‑shirt, or a medal­lion, or some­thing oth­er than the new fla­vor of Bal­ance Bar.

The new fla­vor of Bal­ance Bar is pret­ty good, by the way.