R and J in the USA

July 28, 2024

Some barbecue platters come with one side. Some with two. At the Labadie Ribfest 5K ours came with three sides: Mile 1, Mile 2, and Mile 3. This ribs and running combo was put in the smoker for us on a sunny Sunday morning in Bay City, Michigan.

Julie had put in significant effort to find a way to fit this 5K into our itinerary. It being the day before her birthday, she felt it to be the official kickoff of her celebration. If you know Julie, you know there is a short list of “best birthday presents” you could give her, and ribs is on that list. So, Bay City, Michigan became a must stop on our Michigan circuit.

Nestled in the nook between the thumb and forefinger of Michigan, this is not the Bay City of Starsky & Hutch. No Huggy Bears or Gran Torinos here. This is the Bay City of Saginaw Bay in Lake Huron.

While the ribs may have been cooked low and slow, the race course was prepared flat and fast. An out and back along the Saginaw River, the only hill was an island foot bridge just before the turnaround. The late morning heat being soothed by a light breeze, the biggest challenge of the course was navigating the goose droppings on the home stretch.

For the second race in a row, Julie finished first in her age group and Ryan finished second in his. And for the second race in a row, that was because Ryan’s age group has a lot of fast runners, and Julie’s not as much. While Julie grabbed a first place age group medal for a 26:40, Ryan’s second place medal was hard won with a 23:54. Medals for us both was nice, but the highlight of the day was the post-race barbecue. We sampled ribs from six different vendors, which gave us full stomachs and two days of leftovers.

Ribs and running. What a combo. Happy almost birthday, Julie.

Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds

Despite having run the Ohio race just 4 days prior, Ryan and Julie had enjoyed a fairly easy and relaxing couple of days with some beautiful camping spots overlooking Lake Eerie. We both came into the weekend race with some fuel to burn. We were especially eager to leave it all on the race course as the smell of ribs all around us was reassuring us we would have plenty of calories to refuel with soon.

Having taken it fairly easy mid-week at Ohio’s race and laying down some nice paces around 8:25 average at a nice low heart rate and a flat course ahead, Julie thought, perhaps this would stand to be her fastest race yet. When the race gun went off, Julie started running and felt light and easy at a 7:45 pace. She was excited. This wasn’t just one of those “too fast” race starts that peters out after a couple hundred meters. A third of a mile in, she was holding strong and feeling no sense that this pace would be hard to hold. She was optimistic that a PR might lie in her future. She was wrong on all counts. This is where a more strategic race plan would have helped her. If she had shown some of that Ryan Gallivan restraint, she might have held back that rush of speed she felt and kept herself to only a slightly faster pace than her mid-week run, shooting for a solid 8:15 pace and trying to hold that for 2 miles before seeing if she had anything faster in the tank. All of Julie’s strategic energy was going into planning the itinerary for the trip. She had long ago decided she would be approaching these races with the “winging it” approach and just learn as she went. This is a place where some of that learning occurred. From then on, she decided to try her best to always aim for negative splits, meaning, try her best to take it real easy on that first mile. As Mona Lisa Veto from My Cousin Vinny would say, “That didn’t happen here.”

By the middle of the mile, her 7:45 pace had slowed down to just south of an 8 minute mile. By the second half of mile one, Julie’s pace was north of 8:20 and she finished mile one at an 8:12 pace. While she was still ahead of Ryan, he had her quite close in his sights.

Soon into mile 2 she saw herself slow down to an 8:30 and thought, this is fine, I’ll just hold here. As she was thinking that, she felt someone approaching from behind her and she just knew it was her guy. Within seconds he had pulled up next to her which made her smile. Even though it meant he was about to overtake her, it also happens to be the case that Julie feels happier every time Ryan is near – luckily that fire burns a little brighter than her competitive fire that makes her want to destroy him on a race course. So, he was a welcome sight. They chatted a bit.

”I’m hurtin’!” Julie confessed.

“You got this, baby.” Ryan encouraged, clearly feeling the opposite of fatigue, just breaking through his usual first mile loosen up phase and about to break loose.

”Thanks, babe. Go get ‘em.” She said genuinely and also resolved to her fate of losing another race to her beloved.

Though Ryan and Julie’s watches both clocked them in at an 8:12 for the first mile, our watches are often slightly off from each other. He didn’t pass her until about mile one and a quarter. Ryan sailed on ahead, clocking in his second mile at a juicy 7:58 and rounding out the flat and goose-poop lined course with a speedy 7:14 for mile 3. Julie on the other hand had way underpaced herself and used up most of her juice early on. Classic rookie and/or overoptimistic race-running behavior. As Julie ran into the middle of the race course she started to notice that lovey recovered heart rate from the prior race was good and gone, and she was now back up to running in the low to high 170s. She surrendered and started to walk/run. This began a long battle between her heart rate and her legs. Her legs had SOOOO much juice. Every time she would stop to reign in her 170+ heart rate to wrangle it back down to below 160, when she would start running at what felt like a natural and easy pace, there were those 7:40s again. It felt great to run so fast and free in those bursts before her heart rate started complaining. Thanks to the speed in her intervals, despite positive splits, she was still able to run a somewhat decent overall pace with a modest 6:25 kick at the end – nowhere close to her best, but far from her worst, and still enough to grab an age group medal. That, plus a beautiful course, lots of wonderful lessons mostly learned and the aroma and promise of lots and lots of ribs, she crossed the finish line with a smile on her face. Ryan had enjoyed a nice, steady and somewhat easy race where he also was fully into his new zone of running each race like a race, pushing through hurt as the end came near and his ever improving times were there to show for it.

And perhaps the final birthday present for Julie, she got to enjoy one last moment on the top of the Ryan – Julie podium. It was nice of Ryan to wait until after Julie’s birthday to take her crown. But with ribs in her belly, the tally stands, Julie 7 – Ryan 6.