Impact A Hero 5K

Today I ran in the Impact A Hero 5K, which raises funds to assist our severely wounded veterans coming home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After the first mile, I had to take a walk break because once again, I had gone out too fast and hit my Puke Point. After resuming my run, I noticed that Gary Kubiak had caught up to me. The NFL Houston Texans head coach has been the honorary chairperson for the Impact A Hero 5K for a few years now. He and some of the players were out there this morning to lend some "star power" to the morning's activities.

For a couple of miles, I was keeping pace with Coach Kubiak, who once again was wearing bib #1. To my credit I refrained from lamely asking if we were going to the playoffs this year. He's been a self-professed treadmill junkie in the past, but today he confessed that he only goes running only every other day now. As the Mile 3 marker drew near, Kubiak obviously had more left in the tank than I did, and he pulled away and left me in his wake.

The first time I ran this event in 2007, he pretty much did the same thing to me. The old QB can still scramble, I suppose. I think one of my future goals should be to beat Kubiak to the finish line in this race. But with summer weather here, I'll accept the sub-:30 time and move on!

Mile 1: 8:43
Mile 2: 9:42
Mile 3: 9:21
5K elapsed time: 29:06, per Garmin Forerunner 205

Chip timing was an option for this event, but I declined. Instead I had opted to register as a "non-competitive" run/walk participant. This meant that the part of the fee that would normally go to the timing company -- just under two dollars, if I recall correctly -- would stay in the hands of the charity.



Event T-shirts aren't normally worth a comment, but I think they did an especially good job with this year's edition:



On a side note, I broke a streak this weekend. In 2005 the Astros Race for the Pennant 5K was my first running event ever. I had made a point of going back every year since until it was scheduled up against the IAH race.(Darn you race directors for making me choose!)