As usual, we arrived on Friday, the day before the race. The day is filled with travel, then eating and drinking in Raleigh. This year we had a couple addictions to our crew. Fellow Turtle Ralph Lufkin came down and convinced his friend Jason Gilmore to travel in from Washington DC. Also, a fellow Toll Gate alum, who had run the race a few times prior to us came down as well.
We ate and drank in a responsible manner (well I did). This made race day morning an easy wake-up and I felt ready to roll. This was by far the coldest year of the race with the starting temp around 23 degrees. No big deal for a normal road race…but at Krispy Kreme it meant for frozen water cups at the donut eating area and very frozen/numb/burning hands for the run back.
The race went out per usual, with the herds of college kids going out like it is a 100 meter dash. I went through the mile in 5:27 and felt good. I was running with the multi time KKC winner Nick Oltman for a minute or so before pulling away, if I could only figure out his donut eating secret, I could be a contender for the W.
After he mile I passed a few more people and then one more around 2 miles to end up in 7th place heading into the eating area.
Same ole, same ole in there. It’s a wet, sugary dough dilled experience. I could see Ralph and Mark whom came in after me eating away. Ralph finished about 10 seconds before me and I took off after him and passed him before leaving the zone, he said I made a lot of grunting noises and I was off to the races.
New for me this year was that I had someone around the same speed leave the eating area at the same time as me. We had an elbow to elbow race all the way back. He would put a few steps away from me and then me from him. With just over a mile to go, we passed one of his friends and it gave him a boost. I think it was too much of a boost for his body to handle though; I passed him shortly after and was able to open up a 4 second lead from there til the finish.
I have had a goal since my first KKC to finish in the top 10 and have been pretty close in my previous three attempts. I wasn’t sure what place I finished when crossing the finish line and had to wait a bit to find out as I ran back to the hotel quickly to tend to my frozen literally frosty hands. After I took care of that issue, I ran back to the finish line and met up with everyone and headed to the result tent and got my print out………..drum roll please……9th place!! I was pretty excited. I also ran 4 seconds faster than the previous year, keeping my streak of running faster every year alive!
2015 – 19th 37:17
2016 – 13th 35:13
2017 – 18th 34:45
2018 – 9th 34:41 <---official time
The rest of the trip was great as usual, lots of great breweries and food was had. The most amazing part about the 2018 edition, other than getting 9th place was that we had no flight issues. We made it to Raleigh and back to Warwick without issue.
Next year, I WILL be in better running shape and I might….figure out how to eat faster, probably not though!
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