Angry Tortoise 25K - 2:47:33 - 3-1-2015 - Details

Angry Tortoise 25K - 2:47:33 - 3-1-2015 - Details

I quietly got out of bed at 4:30 this morning and went to the kitchen window to find a steady rain falling. I almost headed back to bed but thought I'd check the weather forecast for Bryceville, FL, about 25 miles northwest of Jacksonville, before making the call. Happily the weather man said that by the 7AM start time of the Angry Tortoise 25K/50K the sky would be clear in the Bryceville area. I had my cereal and coffee and after a trip to the bathroom grabbed my gear and tip toed out the front door.

Last year I was earlier and one of the first to arrive at Cary State Forest. Today I arrived about 10 minutes after 6 and the place was busy with runners making preparations. I think the addition of the 50K option created more interest. I had to jog to the packet pick up area, wait in line for race number and shirt, jog back to my car and by then it was time to grab my gear and head to the start.

I started well back from the front and found myself in the middle of a crowd for the first quarter to half mile. Once things thinned out I turned on my Gym Boss timer and settled into my Galloway routine. Not long after I started my Galloway routine a lady asked if I was doing Galloway and I replied yes. She asked if she could tag along to see how it goes. I told her it is really not all that complicated, 4 minutes of running followed by 1 minute of walking, then repeat, over and over again.

As the 2 of us proceeded we would pass folks during the run segments and they would then pass us during the walk segments. After a bit of this a young man said, hey, you doing Galloway, I said yes and he asked if he could join us. Yea, man, the more the merrier. So the three of us became our own little group and chit chatted the whole way. Having people to talk with made the 4 minute run segments fly by.

I was actually tinkering around with a couple of different Hammer Nutrition products and was quite pleased with the result. I felt really pretty strong right to the end although we did slow some the last few miles.

My goal was to beat last year's time and even with slowing down near the end of the run I beat last year by 3 minutes or, stated differently, was 15 seconds faster per mile.

Once again there was a nice coffee mug and a small pie waiting for each runner at the finish line. I was happy to take the coffee mug and handed the pie to the lady that had been running with me to take home to her 10 year old son.