I won Johnnycake!

What: Johnnycake Jog 5 miler 

When: July 12, 2020

Where: Painsville, OH

Time: 32:30 (6:30 pace)

Splits: 6:14, 6:40, 6:11, 6:28, 6:40

Results: https://www.athlinks.com/event/5849/results/Event/901879/Course/1758950/Bib/395 

Link to the News Herald article: https://www.news-herald.com/sports/medina-resident-renee-harden-wins-johnnycake-jog-womens-division/article_b59b08f8-c466-11ea-bafe-2b5b76c5509e.html

When Covid hit in March, I quickly realized that I wouldn’t be racing much in the summer and decided to stop doing workouts that might beat my body down unnecessarily. I kept running 40-50 miles a week and doing a faster effort of some type once a week. I kept running my Thursday workouts with Todd and in May I began meeting my friend Amanda and the Portage Lakes Running Club to run 14-16 miles on the towpath. These long runs built some surprising strength and now after a few months of it, I sort of feel like a long distance runner. In June, I got wind that the Johnnycake Jog 5 miler was still happening as a live race. I registered, hoping it would go forward and did about three workouts in June to prepare myself. I knew I was not in great shape going into it, but I was fine with that. I was so excited to race!

I arrived in Painsville nearly an hour before I needed to and was one of the first masked participants to pick up my race packet. The building where they have packet pickup was very sparse, with just the bib table with several masked volunteers. It was a “socially distant” race format with masks for packet pickup, no awards or post-race party and the race started in waves every few minutes. This is ironic because both times I’ve run this race in 2014 and 2019 I’ve been socially distant from any other runner the whole race. This is not ideal under normal circumstances! 

The race was smaller than usual and I could tell that not as many fast women were there compared to a normal year. Usually you have to run under 30 minutes to finish in the money. I’ve won my age group here twice, but I wasn’t expecting to be in a position to win. Everyone who predicted 40 minutes and under started in the first wave but there weren’t very many of us. Otherwise, the start seemed normal. I wanted around a 6:15-6:20 average and I thought this seemed very doable but this course has been difficult for me to figure out. I went out with a 6:14 and this felt in control. I was bouncing along on my New Balance Rebel TCs (carbon plate) and feeling pretty smooth. There was one lady ahead of me but only by a few seconds per mile. I decided to try and catch her in the third mile and kept my eye on her. I didn’t realize I slowed down the second mile, but I apparently ran a 6:40. We run through shaded, attractive neighborhoods and it doesn’t seem like a race atmosphere. In the third mile I moved hard to catch her as I could see she had slowed down. I caught her right at three miles (6:11) and told myself that I wasn’t allowed to get lazy just because I was in the lead. But I was feeling hot, the road stretched out ahead of me forever, I was pretty out of shape for this effort and in classic Johnnycake Jog fashion, I was all alone. Then a guy caught me in the fourth mile (6:28) and I began pacing with him. He was very encouraging down that 1.75 mile stretch to the finish line and I’m sure I would have slowed down much more if I didn’t have his company. My last mile was 6:40 and when I saw the tape at the finish I couldn’t help but kick it in and give a big smile with my hands up. I thought that was the first time I’d broken the tape but I remembered later that I broke the tape a few times as a teenager in local races in Michigan. They used to do that a lot more! I won $100 for my efforts and that is almost as good as the super cool finish pic. I didn’t miss the awards or the post-race snacks. I did a quick interview with the News-Herald and headed out for my cooldown, during which I nearly died of starvation. Maybe I do miss the post-race snacks?! So I made sure to hit up McDonalds right down the street before I headed back home. I’ll be back next year Johnnycake! Hopefully the snacks will be back.