Day 1343 -- Race Report: Eau Claire Pikermi

What a week it's been.

• Monday: Planning meeting for this summer's Cub Scout Day Camp, with the Oldest and Newest Little Jogger, who will be helping out. The Littlest Little Jogger had children's choir.
  
• Tuesday: The LLJ had a meeting at the middle school to talk about next year's orchestra. It would have overlapped with Cub Scouts, but Cub Scouts was canceled.
  
• Wednesday: Math Department Banquet.
  
• Thursday: "STEMposium" in which the various programs around the area designed to increase interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math show off their results. Both the LLJ and the First Little Jogger have projects. The O&N is supposed to have a soccer game, but it's canceled because of rotten weather.
  
• Friday: I get up before the crack of dawn to drive up to the state meeting of the Mathematical Association of America. The O&N goes to a friend's house for the weekend, the FLJ goes to another science camp for the weekend, and the LLJ goes camping with the Cubs. Mrs. J and the Medium Little Jogger party until they drop.
  
• Saturday: More math meeting, until early afternoon. At which point I drive a half hour to Eau Claire, for the Pikermi. I am the only one at the race expo wearing a tie.
  
• Sunday: Run the Pikermi (more below). Drive three and a half hours home. Finally get a few seconds to relax.
  

So that's why I haven't been blogging.

And how was the Pikermi, you ask? Cold. It was mid-thirties and gusty winds. We had occasional flakes of snow throughout the morning. Somebody suggested that it really wasn't such bad weather for the first day of March. For the first day of May, however....

The start was the single most disorganized experience I've ever had at a race. At first, no one even knew where we were going to line up. When we did figure it out, there was nothing to indicate where to line up for your pace. There was a pace team, but their projected times were written on balloons, which bobbled in the wind, making them impossible to read. There was an announcer, but you couldn't hear him from the starting area. I swear I never saw a race organizer at all.

Once we got going, things were better. The water stops were frequent and well manned. The course was quite nice, with a few gentle hills, and enough scenery to keep one interested.

I tucked in with the two-and-a-half hour pacer. He was a nice guy, and we had a nice long conversation about various courses he'd been on, and various courses I'd been on, and training, and aging, and all sorts of stuff. There was one other woman who ran with us, and that was pretty much the pace group for nine miles. At that point, she started to drop back, and I decided to push ahead. I finished in 2:25, which wasn't bad, all things considered. Ten hours later, I'm starting to get feeling back in my fingers and toes.

I think that I would do the Pikermi or even the Marathon again in Eau Claire, if only they could promise me decent weather.