CAK5K on the Runway

Because this race is at an active airport, you park off-site and take a school bus shuttle over to the MAPS Air Museum (Military Aviation Preservation Society). I got there about an hour before the start to grab my bib and race shirt, which left plenty of time to walk around the hangar. The museum itself is interesting—filled with military aviation artifacts, general aviation history (including one of the Goodyear Blimp passenger cabins), and several massive decommissioned planes parked outside for static display.

The race went off right on the dot at 8:00am, taking us straight out onto the taxiways and runways. Being just one week out from the Berlin Marathon, I wasn’t totally sure how my legs would respond, but this was the first day since Berlin where I felt pretty normal. Within the first half mile, I could tell my turnover was back and I was running like myself again.

The course was pancake-flat, fast, and full of cool aviation sights. Early on, we watched a Breeze Airways commercial flight take off right next to us, followed by smaller planes circling overhead laying down contrails in the sky. We also routed around several parked light aircraft like Cessnas out on the tarmac. There weren’t any mile markers along the route, so I just kept an eye on my watch to check pacing. Before the start, I figured I might run around 20 to 21 minutes, but once I locked into the effort, I could tell I was running faster than that.

It was an out-and-back course with a great turnout, including lots of run-walkers and families with strollers out enjoying the open tarmac. After the 2-mile mark, we looped toward an active military section of the airfield, running past hangars and a massive twin-rotor helicopter. On the approach to that loop, I saw the leaders heading back the other way, which let me gauge the front of the field. Within that military section during the final mile, they had a 100-meter timed sprint called the "Afterburner Zone". I considered trying to shift gears for it, but I was already maxing out my 5K effort and simply didn’t have a higher gear.

Heading down the final stretch toward the finish line, I gave everything I had left in the tank. A runner managed to edge past me at the end because I just didn’t have a finishing kick left—which to me was proof that I paced aggressively throughout the course.

I was thrilled to find out I took 1st place in my age group and got a trophy for it!

There’s definitely some rigmarole with off-site parking, shuttle buses, and logistics for a 5K, but running freely across an airport runway on a morning with perfect weather made it completely worth it.