This Saturday is the Expo 5k/10k here in Knoxville, Tennessee. It is Knoxville’s third largest road race but probably the most popular among local runners. It is often used as an official Grand Prix course for South East Running circuit. Like 95% of all courses here in Knoxville, it is certified, which means that someone said… yup, this here course is 5 kilometers or 10 kilometers. What that means is that for diehard runners trying to get seeded in large 10k, such as Peachtree City 10k, your official time can be used to have you seeded, or placed, for the starting line. For faster runners, this is good. You don’t have the people who are slower but line up closer to the front get in your way (that is WHOLE topic on it’s own).
Another reason why this course is popular is that it runs through Downtown and the 4th & Gill district. A good number of races here in Knoxville are runs along Neyland Drive that parallels the Tennessee River. The course is “flat” for the area, but so many races are run on this course, it gets boring. In fact, there is a Neyland Greenway (which I blogged about earlier) that runs along the river. So, the only advantage of running a race on Neyland is running on the road… big whoop. The one race that I run on Neyland is the Fireball Classic 5k, which is held on July 3rd at NIGHT! They have fireworks, booths afterwards, usually a finishers trinket. Also, about 600+ people show up!
So, back to the Expo… This year, the Expo has more meaning for me. It is my first race since my Pneumonia. Now Wait Terry, what was that Run for the Deaf 5k that you did. Well, even though that was a paid event, it was a training run for the Expo. The ultimate goal was the Expo. Secondly, I am running this race in memory of my Grandmother. I had wanted to run a sub-50 minute 10k which would be a 8:04 minutes per mile pace. Now, I am so sure that I can reach that pace… I’ll come close, but not sure. One of the reasons is the lack of training this past week. Since last Thursday, I have ran 0 miles. I’ll probably be able to run on the treadmill tonight, but it won’t be too strenuous and more of a calming of the nerves more than any training. Here is a list of all the 10k races that I have run, again, you’ll see the sub-50 is an ambitious goal for me.
| Race | Date | Overall Time | Pace |
| Rat Race | Oct-7-2000 | 48:06 | 7:42 |
| News-Sentinel Expo | May-26-2001 | 51:11 | 8:11 |
| Run on the Bayou | Mar-3-2002 | 50:03 | 8:01 |
| Expo | May-24-2003 | 52:01 | 8:19 |
| Expo | May-29-2004 | 51:53 | 8:18 |
I have created a tshirt that I will run during the Expo, so that everyone who passes me and those that I pass, along with spectators and volunteers will know. I chose the yellow tshirt (thanks to my Aunt Phyllis) since that was Grandma Varney’s favorite color and the scripture passage (Luke 7:47) was from my Mom. This logo, which was made just with my computer and a t-shirt transfer is on both sides of the shirt.
Be sure to check back after Saturday to read the race report and see how it all played out. Or better yet, you can capture my RSS feed and be notified each time I update this website. I know that the new Netscape has built in RSS feed detection and aggregation. There are other separate programs that will read the feeds for you in your browser doesn’t have the capability. I use the Firefox browser with the Sage extension and am very happy with my set-up.
PLANET3RRY 