Race Report: Big House Big Heart 2011
Last Sunday I ran the Big House Big Heart 5k. The race started outside of Michigan stadium, looped around part of Central Campus and then finished by going through the tunnel entrance to the Big House and down to the middle of the field. Overall, I loved the course; It had only one somewhat large hill near the beginning of the race and then was completely flat or downhill the entire race.
There were, literally, tons of people that ran the race. Based on the results, there were over 6000 finishers\! This is probably one of the biggest races I’ve even been in. I think it’s great that many people wanted to run - the problem was that I made the mistake of not starting right up front and I got boxed in for a large portion of the race. It took almost a minute for me to cross the starting line after the race started - that didn’t affect my time as it was chip timed but it did affect the number of people that I had to weave in an out of to pass.
The first mile (which was around 6:50) was constant passing and weaving and speeding up and slowing down. The same for most of the 2nd mile as well. This really affected my racing a lot. I’d say that the ’race’ turned into more of a ’run’ for me since I wasn’t able to get to race pace at any point.
That said, it was a lot of fun and a beautiful day for a race. I learned my lesson and I won’t make the same mistakes again. I ended up finishing in 20:22 which was a top 100 finish. I’m not thrilled with my time but I’m glad I ran all the same\!
The full results are here:Â <http://www.rftiming.net/results/bhbh/bhbh20115k_overall.htm>