Greer Earth Day Run

This past Saturday, Tony and Joseph participated in the Greer Earth Day Run.  Tony ran the half marathon and Joseph ran the 5K.  Joseph was going to run the Kids Mile till he learned that it did not include a shirt.  That's when he decided to up his game and run his first 5K.  Unfortunately, the race organizers apparently didn't plan for kids running the 5K, so the smallest shirt they had was an adult medium.  Still, Joseph wears it with pride.

Though we drove separately, we got there in time for the (delayed) start of Tony's race.

 This picture amuses me, because these half-marathoners are serious runners.  Look at them all looking at their watches (many of them are GPS/heartrate monitors as well), ready to start them when the race starts:

Tony waits till he crosses the start line to start his watch.  The timing chip in their race bibs records "gun time," so if you're back in the starting pack, time is counting against you before you ever get to the line.  Tony wants to get his actual race time on his watch.

Tony's goal was to finish between 1 hour 36 minutes and 1 hour 45 minutes. The clock when he crossed the line said 1:45:19.  HOWEVER, all the runners with GPS watches will tell you that the course was longer than the 13.1 miles it was supposed to be.  So, when you take that into account, his actual half marathon time was 1:43:16.  That's 7:53 per mile.  He finished 59 out of 480 runners. 

 (By the way, that girl in black with the pink hat was running the 10K, which started after the half and obviously had a different course.  All three races shared the same finish line.)

Here's Joseph, ready to start his race, setting his pretend watch:

He lined up toward the front of the middle of the pack.

Off and running!  It was a little nerve-racking for me to send him off for 3.1 miles of city streets, but one of Tony's co-workers was running the same race with a similar projected pace, and he kept an eye on Joseph.

Approaching the finish line:

Joseph's two goals were to run the whole time (no walking) and to finish between 27 and 30 minutes.  His official bib time was 30:16.  HOWEVER, a train crossed the course within the first mile or so, and Joseph had to wait for it to get past.  Fortunately, he is a wise child.  He was one of the first to get stopped by the train, and watched a man duck under the crossing arm and run across in front of the train.  In order to meet the goal of running the whole time, he jogged in place as he waited for the train to pass.  We don't know exactly how long the train delayed him, but crowd estimates ranged from 30 seconds to two minutes.  It is safe to conclude that he met his goal of under 30 minutes when you subtract train time.  He finished 125th out of 440.

Here's where I would put a nice post-races picture of father and son.  If only I had taken one.