Finding a spot near behind the 9 min per mile starting corral, I catch a glimpse of a woman looking behind her. She looks familiar from somewhere. “Excuse me,” I say as I cut in between two women in front of me. I ask the familiar person if she went to the same high school that I did, and she responds with a “Yes.” I say, “Hi, I’m Joe.”

As it turns out she graduated in the same year as I and has run in two half marathons, the OUC and Gasparilla halves, which I ran in but just now we’ve bumped into each other. “Is this your first 10K?” she asks. “Nah, I’ve run a bunch of them.” I learn that she will be training for her first full out-of-state marathon in November.

They start off the wheelchairs with a 90 second wait before for the runners to take off. Then, it’s running with crowds of people down the brick roads of Winter Park.

The woman I spoke with in the starting corrals jumps up onto the sidewalk, and I squeeze my way through pockets of people. Some people go faster than others as I scan the road ahead for gaps between people. Sometimes I guess correctly and move up ahead; other times I misjudge a narrowing gap and slow down to let them go.

A red digital clock waits at mile marker one. “9:30. You’re looking good!” a lady exclaims. GPS watches harmoniously chime around me. “8:42,” says another woman as she glances at her watch.

I follow the crowd as everyone weaves through neighborhood streets shielded by a large canopy of trees. I believe the only section of straight road is near the start and finish lines. I look ahead to see where the crowd is turning next.

Approaching mile three I descend down a hill. The next digital clock displays twenty-five minutes and change. I try to do the math to figure out how fast that is, but I know that it’s faster than my usual 10 min per mile clip that I do around the neighborhood.

Occasionally, the sun makes an appearance as you work your way around a lake. The course veers right and the road inclines slightly. People breathe a bit harder. Relief arrives in the form of comedy. “Oh yeah!” a guy yells. You never know what to expect when you run these things. The same guy located somewhere behind me yells, “Tacos! Burritos! What’s that coming out of your Speedo?”

The wind is knocked out of me as I belt out with laughter. What can I say? I am easily entertained.

For the next three miles, I enjoy taking my mind off of the road and listening to these people. Every few minutes they find something clever to say. “I think we finished 20 minutes ago.”

… and three miles away, the lead runner crosses the finish line.

The next three miles entails more weaving through neighborhoods, slight up and down hills, and brick and asphalt roads. A family tries handing out donuts near mile 5.

Two ladies talk about pacing. They figure that they are going at a 8:45 min/mile pace with a mile left to go. One wants to keep going at the same speed, the other want to just forget about the pace. “Don’t we have 20 miles left?” the guy behind me asks. “Thank God, no,” I think to myself.

“Isn’t there a park that we run through?” one of the ladies near me asks. Down the road and to the left, the course turns turns off the road and follows an asphalt trail through a park. Leaving the park, I following a brick road and see mile marker 6 with a read-out of fifty-two minutes. Ahead in distance, is a large banner hanging over the street with a yellow digit clock underneath. “So, this is how far .2 miles is,” I think. I widen the distance from the comedians as I make my towards the finish line.

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