Last month was the 47th Annual Roseville Big Bird race! It is the one I have done every single year since 2007. I totally picked my wedding date around this race. This is a small-town, no-frills race offering three race distances, and -usually- it seems no hiccups are had…

I keep my races logged into a paper notebook. And I still have the notebook from high school! I created a table of my race times, mostly for myself. For years I’ve been meaning to create this. It is cool to compare over the years – and see what I can work towards to.

YearRaceTime (avg mile pace)
20074k19:10 (7:43)
200810k51:37 (8:20)
200910k54:55 (8:51)
201010k49:38 (7:59)
201110k55:21 (8:54)
201210k54:45 (8:49)
201310k51:50 (8:21)
201410k51:21 (8:17)
201510k51:48 (8:21)
201610k54:06 (8:44)
201710k48:27 (7:49)
201810k51:03 (8:14)
201910k52:31 (8:28)
202010k Virtual1:02:08 (10:01)
202110k1:03:51 (10:18)
202210k1:01:38 (9:56)
20235k28:38 (9:14)
20245k29:44 (9:35)
20255k 4k23:06 (9:14)

In 2020 we ran the race “virtually.” I went to a hilly metropark and ran my own 10k. That was only ‘virtual’ race I’ve done.

One of the nice things about this race is that it does not start early in the morning. The one mile, 10k, and 5k* races start 10 am -10:20 am. It’s easy to get parking. And there’s a nice, warm, spacious community center with indoor restrooms to utilize before and after. This was really appreciated as it was snowing that morning!

*The 5k has only been offered in the last few years. Previously, it had always been a 4k distance in addition to the 10k and 1-mile.

We arrived a little after 9 am. It’s much earlier than needed but I can’t help it! In one of the gyms, you pick up your bib, pins, a shirt, and gloves! This year the shirts were a beautiful bright coral color! Several years ago, I decided I would save the old, worn-out shirts from 10+ years ago and turn them into a shirt-quilt blanket. Now that I have reached 16 shirts, I can’t find where that pile went! 😒

This year there were less than a hundred people in the 10k. I recall years past there were a few hundred. Now that I went through my running log notebook, one year I wrote in how many participants there… 2010 was 459 people. This race could use a few more people as the proceeds go right back to the community we’re running through.

I ran the 5k and, as you can see, I have not ran the 5k course option here very much, I don’t have the course memorized like the 10k. Honestly, I didn’t even look at the course map ahead of time. Well, when we were heading down the long finishing stretch, we were going to be short on distance. The girl next to me halted, I stopped too, and she said, “we weren’t supposed to turn here!”

“Oh, we were supposed to turn here, this is the finish, but I’m not going to run out for more.” And we started up again.

That’s too bad! My watch had me at 2.5 miles across the finish. It wasn’t until later that I learned where we went wrong: upon exiting the park, the course volunteer should have directed 5k runners to make a left turn instead of a right turn. There was a gap in the finishers. I remember waiting ahead of the finish for my friends to come through – thinking – “they should be here by now!” Their watches had them at ~3.5 miles! The race timing company split the race results into both a 5k and a 4k division to better reflect the results.

I can understand why this would incredibly disappointing to happen in a race – short or long. This could be a person’s only race for the year (like my mom), or selected as someone’s goal race in which they worked months for this. Be it their first 5k ever in a couch to 5k program or a challenge for themselves to cut some time off.

My goal this race was to run faster than the Run Wild 5k race in September. My time to beat was 28:53. I felt I was on right track! At the end of the second mile it was getting tough! When I finished, I knew I had “more in the tank.” 😣 Do you think I could have maintained that pace from 9:07?

 Avg Pace (min/mile)
Mile 18:47
Mile 29:07
~0.59:51

Besides that, my only disappointment is that this could possibly deter people from returning next year. ☹

Onto more positive things, this is the race that raffles off frozen turkeys and other prizes! Key word: RAFFLE! Which means, you don’t have to be the fastest person to win a great prize. I love it! They draw bib entries while we’re out running so you come back into the warm gym and head to the board to see if your bib number is written!

This year, both my husband and I won turkeys in the raffle!! If we didn’t have two family Thanksgiving dinners to attend, I would have let him not claim the prize so as to give the bird to another individual. (We actually went to three Thanksgiving feasts!) Anyways! I was happy to have friends join in this year. I hope you’ll come next year!