Thank you, Thank you! Farewell Party + Big Fun 5k

  After speaking with Rebecca Thomason just weeks ago about my departure to Australia, she offered to host a "farewell" party in my honor at her household. She basically set up everything on her own, with giving me freedom to invite friends to enjoy the gathering with. I am so thankful and most importantly fortunate to have so many amazing friends like Rebecca to celebrate my journey with.

  Once at the party, we all realized that this scavenger hunt was some serious business, as it involved a lot of running around all the way to the uptown area and back, all the while in costume! I decided to pass and stick around to catch up with some old college buddies to play catch up the best we could in an hour's time.


As the farewell gathered more and more people, I was very delighted to see that so many people showed up to enjoy just a last hoorah for me. Check out some of the pictures below to see how much fun it was!

I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who came out to have one last laugh with me. It was a very special time for me and I don't take my friendship for granted with each and everyone of you. After the scavenger hunt was complete I was greeted with some cash in hand from the proceeds of the party, which made me pretty excited knowing that this would more than likely be enough to ship my bike down under! Thank you thank you thank you


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As a conclusion to this post, I woke up saturday morning bright and early after about 2 hours of rest and jumped into a 5k that started directly across the street from me in the Blakeney Shopping center...The event was amazing in fact, one of the best local 5k's I have ever seen put on in the area. I knew that if certain precautions weren't made, that the course could be cut slightly short simply by taking a few corners a certain way.  The course is USATF certified but I think a few of the turns were taken sharply to trim the course down a bit. As a disclosure to all interested/current clients of PRC, my preparation for the race was extremely against the rules of all recommended advice I would typically give.

  My warm-up included, waking up, walking across the street to get my packet, walking back and then taking a 15 minute hot shower, followed by a 4 minutes run in the treadmill, then a 15 minute rant with various people before realizing the race was to start in a mere 2 minutes. As the bad decisions piled up, I decided to go ahead and take off my shirt, it was only 40 degree's out, why not? Arm warmer's and a hat, fun times. In short the gun fired and everyone took off directly uphill out of the shopping center. I was getting left right away by young kids, old men, women and maybe even a few baby joggers. there were 2 things that I realized about a 1/2 mile into the race;

1. I was behind Justin Breland and Kent Morris by a fair amount, just basing off of our current 5k times, I should certainly be in front of them, as well as the grey haired guy in front of them with basketball shorts. 
2. Pezz was pretty far up the road on me, crap I need to pick up the pace or I will get rolled by a girl!!! She is legit, yes I did have an excuse to fall back on from my lack of sleep and wealth of hops in my stomach, but I had to man up. 

I managed to pass Pezz at the mile mark, debating on whether to help her pace or to continue on, I decided to catch up to some other guy who was sporting triathlon gear and went out "balls to the wall" with the ballers.   I was feeling surprisingly great, so I decided to just basically sprint for about 200 meters to lay the law down so to speak. After I hit about the 1.5m mark, I realized that the rest of the race I would be completely alone, maybe I should push it? na cruise control to stay in front of Pezz was all i really cared about, so as I approached the line not having wore a watch, I was completely surprised to see 15:49, 50, 51...15:56!

Big South 5K 2010
                         Charlotte, NC 10/23/2010
             UNOFFICIAL Results by Queen City Timing Services
                 RESULTS POSTED ON www.queencitytiming.com

Place Div/Tot  Gen/Tot  Name                Ag G Bib   City         St Chiptim Guntime Pace  
===== ======== ======== =================== == = ===== ============ == ======= ======= ===== 
    1   1/23     1/420  Matthew Elliott     25 M   858 Rock Hill    SC   14:45   14:45  4:45 

    2   1/11     2/420  Ricky Flynn         23 M  1472 Lynchburg    VA   14:53   14:54  4:48 
    3   2/23     3/420  Jordan Kinley       26 M  5621                   15:33   15:33  5:01 
    4   3/23     4/420  Chris Lamperski     28 M  1058 Charlotte    NC   15:56   15:57  5:08 
    5   1/51     1/435  Stephanie Pezzulo   28 F  1486 Waxhaw       NC   16:17   16:17  5:15 
   

My new approach to racing will not involve a garmin but by racing off of feel alone as it seems I have been able to adapt to paces much more appropriately in that manner. 

Pictured with the Eagle is a good friend, Scott Helms who left from uptown Charlotte with a headlamp on in the early AM to make it in time to run the course in order to complete his 20 miler along side PRC member Dusti Jensen. great to see both of them knocking 20 miles out like it was nothing!