Race Result

Racer:	Keith Bohnenberger
Race:	VA Run Turkey Trot 5K
Date:	Thursday, November 27, 2008
Location:	Centreville, VA
Race Type:	Run - 5 km
Age Group:	Male 40 - 44
Time:	0:24:56
Age Group Place:	79 / 296
Comment:	Run Henry Run

Race Report:

My wife and a neighbor trained together for the Marine Corp Marathon. They did the Reston Runners Wednesday night intervals as part of their training. My wife would come home and tell me how Henry, our neighbor's 9 year old son would smoke them around the track.

When we heard a bunch of my neighbors were doing this race, including Henry, my wife and I joined in on the fun.

We got to the race a little after 7. It was cold. We got our packets and went back to the car to for a little warmth. Our neighbors arrived a little bit after we did but we couldn't find them at the race start. Lots of people. We made our way up near the front but I couldn't find Henry. The gun went off and my wife decided to start running because she was cold. I decided to wait for the sea of people to pass by in hopes I could find Henry. I saw Henry and the run began. Henry's pretty little so he was able to navigate the crowd a bit better than me but as things loosened up a bit we were able to run side by side. We were running at what was a comfortably hard pace for me. Henry seemed to be doing fine. I was interested in seeing how hard Henry pushed himself and how well he paced himself. I also wanted to see how he would do if I tried to push him a little bit. Lots of people commented on this little 9 year old running past them. It's fun running with Henry. As we got some space in the crowd we picked up the pace a bit. Shortly after the 2.5 mile mark I noticed Henry was hurting a little bit. He said his stomach hurt so we stopped and walked for a minute or two. Henry bounced back and started running again. He had a good final kick to the finish line and my goal of finishing 1 second behind Henry was accomplished! I was really impressed with Henry. He pushed himself hard and he paced himself well. Very impressive for a 9 year old.

We cheered on the rest of the neighborhood crew as they crossed the finish line. We hung out for a bit but I was getting pretty cold so Patty and I decided to head back home to our thanksgiving guests and prepare for the festivities.

This was a fun race that was well run and for a great cause.

I was nice seeing the Ortons our there. I was bummed I missed Shawn Clark in the mix of 4000 runners. Hopefully I'll see him at the Hawaii Ironman social coming up.