R and J in the USA

August 31, 2024

On a sunny Saturday morning, about 50 people gathered for the Go for Gary 5K on the southern tip of Lake Michigan in Marquette Park in Gary, Indiana.

The race unfolded on a two-lap loop course that was shady and undulating on the back stretch and sunny and flat on the home stretch. Lap courses can sometimes seem repetitive, but this one had enough variation to keep it interesting. There were turns, curves, and small hills. There were sections open to the sky and sections carved through the trees. There were gardens, ponds, and grand old beach buildings on the periphery. And there was Lake Michigan topping it all off, with the Chicago skyline visible thirty miles in the distance.

The race was on the slower side, with the overall winner clocking in at around 21:15. Julie and Ryan both took 3^rd place – Julie was the third overall female finisher and Ryan was the third overall male finisher. But this race wasn’t about times or places. It was about the cause.

The race was a food drive charity event put on jointly by the Food Bank of Northern Indiana and medical students from the Indiana School of Medicine Northwest. Most of the participants and volunteers were medical students or people associated with the food bank. This gave the event a fun, cohesive atmosphere.

We were impressed with how positive and enthusiastic the students and food bank staff were, runners and volunteers alike. We were also impressed that the students were looking outward when they could easily remain focused solely on their own busy task of med school.

While it was nice to place, and nice to run decent races, the results of this race were not measured in times. They were measured in dollars and meals. So much so that if you look for the results online, you won’t find race times. You’ll find the dollars raised by race participants and other donors.

In the final tally, the race raised over $11,000, which translates to over 33,000 meals. Go Gary!

Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds

The small field of approximately 50 or so runners in the Gary 5K lined up for the race and everyone took their positions about 6 feet behind the starting line. Nobody wanted to be out in front. That gave Julie and Ryan a sense of what the participants thought about their race running capabilities. Julie and Ryan saw nowhere to go but in front of them. So, for the first time, we were the first in line to run. Julie heard the two girls behind her say, “Oh, I’ll probably just run 10 minute miles.” Okay, Julie thought. If that’s the case, I guess it’s okay that I’m standing in front of them, knowing that, in any other case, Julie did not belong at the front of a 5K race start. Maybe not at the back, but not at the front. Those girls, once they started running, took 1st and 2nd place female overall and ran 24:23 and 24:33, respectively. These are decisively NOT 10 minute mile times. The race started and they just took off! Good for them!

As for Ryan and Julie, both had come into the Gary race intending to take this one easy and run it like a jog. However, with such a small field, and Ryan ramping up the way he had been, Julie whispered to him, “You know, if you run this like a race, you might win the whole thing.” Julie started thinking the same for herself. Maybe not the whole thing, but something. Uh oh. Now her competitive fuse had been lit. “Smart Julie“ usually doesn’t control the show when this is the case. 

When the race started, Ryan and Julie headed out with speed. Julie’s hunger to lay down some speed in a small race was a back step after having managed herself so beautifully on the Illinois course. Julie reverted back to her old habit and turned in positive splits. Coming out of the gate way too fast, then slowing down to way too slow, it took her until a half mile in to find a pace she was fairly certain she could maintain. Once again, she was wrong. She has to accept that, until she recovers fully, a speed she can maintain for 3.12 miles at this point is one that is going to feel particularly slow to her in the first mile.

She finished the first mile at an 8:29, and the entire race was a long process of losing juice the rest of the way. She found herself in a familiar position in mile 3, stopping to walk when the finish line wasn’t too far away, but then having lots of speed just pour out in between walking stops. With this strategy she put in an 8:53 for mile 3, just about the same as she ran in mile 2.

This is the very first race in our series where Julie ended the race unhappy with her run. She enjoyed the morning, the setting, and the experience, but was disappointed that she expended so much precious energy for little to no benefit. She felt she had given in to her competitive nature and given up the gains she made in recovery recently, and not even producing anything all that great to show for it.

For better or worse, her disappointment was slightly assuaged when she ended up taking the award for 3rd female overall with her fairly slow time of 27:04. It was a small consolation, but at least her dubious motive for running like that ended up bearing fruit, even though it still may not have been a particularly wise thing to do.

She considered her podium stance at least slightly, if not largely, a technicality. In the middle of mile 1, a woman caught up to her and passed her running just south of 8:30’s. This woman is, in some ways, the rightful owner of Julie’s plaque. Julie considered giving it to her, but couldn’t find her after the race.

Though the course was explained before the race, that we would do one loop, finish it with an out and back and then leave that out and back to enter into the second loop in the same direction as the first loop, there were a few folks about a hundred or so meters in front of Julie that got confused at the entry to the second loop and started running it in the wrong direction. Julie almost made the same mistake, but noticed it and remembered the instructions and was DETERMINED not to let it be a three time event for her to go off course. As she started the new loop, there was a race organizer running towards the area to catch the people who had made the wrong turn. One of those runners was the woman who had passed Julie in mile one and held onto a spot a couple of hundred yards ahead of her for the duration of the first half of the race. Not so lucky for that runner, but it got Julie a 3rd place award plaque. Julie considered it some kind of karmic redemption for the other two races that she had been running pretty well before falling victim to course confusion and a reward for resisting the temptation to follow those in front of her blindly and go off course, as she had done in the two races prior.  So, she decided to enjoy the plaque nonetheless, especially because she got to share it with Ryan, who got the same one. That made it all worth it.

Ryan ran this race with the fire of someone that knew it was at least possible to win the whole thing. And, as predicted, he again dropped his race time into the next minute down. He ran a full 30+ seconds faster than in his prior race, clocking in a 22:41, with an average pace of 7:19 per mile. Keeping his pattern of solid negative splits, he started out with a 7:35, dropped down to 7:18 in mile 2, and logged his fastest mile of the trip with a 7:08 for mile 3.  While he cleared the fourth place runner in the race by over a minute, there were still two runners a minute or so faster than him in this race, so he also captured a 3rd place overall plaque. We both finished the race tired, but still decided to hop on our bikes and ride around the loop to check off “biking in Indiana”. Afterward, we hit the park’s beach on the most southern shore of Lake Michigan. 

The race was called “Go for Gary” and that is what we did.

Ryan 10 – Julie 7.