Blazing down a racetrack at 3 miles per hour

On April 1 I ran in the third foot race of my life.

In last week's column I explained how the first race - a junior high school turkey trot - began with me falling flat on my face, then tripping two other runners.

The second race, a 5K I ran as a 45-year-old college homecoming attendee, ended with me finishing dead last, several yards behind a 78-year-old codger.

As Patty and I rode a shuttle bus from a remote parking garage to the race site, I felt like a mouse at a cat show. Although this had been preceded by seven weeks of working out, that exercise had focused on calisthenics and weight training, not beefing up the lungs and heart.

Often walking and swimming and biking, I used to think I was fairly fit. But when chief trainer Josh Steckler ran me through a baseline series of assessment tests at the beginning of Fittest Loser, part of that involved measuring how "far" I could walk or run on a treadmill in 12 minutes. I began walking at what seemed to me to be a faster-than-usual pace on the machine.

Then I looked down at the red-glowing monitor. It said "2.5 mph."

I had heard that people typically walk about 3 mph. I had always assumed that was the case with me, except when walking with a dog who wanted to constantly stop and sniff. But apparently 3 mph was faster than I had thought.

Our daughter M.B., who is really "into" running, had recommended that I approach the 5K in "intervals," alternating running and walking.

She thought that should offer my best chance to avoid dying. So as I fell in along one of the driveways at Cantigny with two of the Fittest Loser contestants and a couple of our trainers, I determined to do just that.

With 1,500 people enrolled in the Foodie 5K, the waiting runners looked more like a giant mob than competitors in a race. In fact, we couldn't even see the "Start" line from our distant site.

But right at 9 a.m., several hundred yards away and hidden behind the crowd, a man presumably standing up at that line counted out "3, 2, 1, GO!" through a megaphone.

The fast runners at the front presumably burst forward in full jogging mode. Those toward the back, either because they knew they would be slow or because like me they had arrived late, didn't start moving right away.

Gradually the motion at the front of the mob rippled slowly back through the human mass. Soon even those who had intended only to walk - even some people pushing baby strollers - had begun to move.

Push Fitness trainer Patrick Stille interrupted my interview with Fittest Loser contestant Penny Brown. "Are you ready to go?" he cried out to her, and they both began running at mid-speed past the side of our lethargic mass of slow-walkers.

It was do-or-die time. Should I too try to run and alternate running and walking? Or should I just amble along with the slow Joes? Of course, I decided on the latter.

It was never even very clear when our mob walked past the Start line. But we each had chips embedded into the ID placards across our chests, so some electronic brain did register our passing. I would find out later that I passed Start about three minutes after the race officially started.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't just being lazy. I was putting some coal on the fire, aggressively walking at a smart pace. Several times as I came up behind a knot of walkers, I would even start jogging along the side of the trail for the 30 or 60 seconds it took to get past them.

Most of the course followed cart trails through Cantigny's golf links.

"This is beautiful," one walker said. I had to agree.

And we passed some unexpected sights as well including a whole collection of Army tanks. "Ah, that's one of those little Stuart light tanks, like the heroes had in those D.C. comic books I used to read in the '60s." We even passed a Renault tank like our doughboys used in World War I and I marveled at how tiny and flimsy the thing looked.

Volunteers along the way rang cowbells - real cowbells, not the cowbell-shaped weights we use in workouts - and shouts of "You can do it!" encouraged us.

Several of the walkers in front of us were wearing cone-shaped witches hats. I learned they were part of a delegation of more than 20 runner/walkers who work for the Ditch Witch mechanical products company and related businesses.

As we passed Cantigny's greenhouse, we were being eyed suspiciously by 10 cocky-looking observers who were real turkeys. Literally wild turkeys. One of the males spread his tail feathers and gobbled. A stroller-pushing mother doing the walk told her little boy, "He's saying, 'Please don't eat me for food.'"

When we finally crossed the finish line, the time read "58:46." I had finished the 3-plus miles in under an hour. Later I would discover that my official time, measured by that electronic chip, was only 55 minutes and 12 seconds. So yes, I had averaged barely more than 3 mph.

But I didn't fall down, or trip anyone else. I had finished faster than scores of other people. And as I had discovered, 3 mph is faster than you might think.

• Dave Gathman is a Daily Herald correspondent. He is undergoing the same physical workouts and nutritional counseling as the Fittest Loser contestants as he writes about their journey.