Sports Bro Or How To Miss A Medal

Saturday I ran the Wood Memorial Trout Run 10k in Kalkaska, MI. This was the first race that I ran with no support staff/family/friend cheerers. This was another small race and I had showed up early enough to drive the course. Luckily the course was marked very well and exactly as described, 6.2 miles. Since it was such a small event the 5k was run at the same time. I had gotten a new compression shirt the week before and had saved it's inaugural voyage for this race. The start was a bit delayed, which wasn't helped by the cold and wind. Just when I thought I couldn't possibly wait anymore the gun went off and we were on our way. About a tenth of mile in I learned the error of my ways. I have been wearing a 2XL compression shirt, but the new one was XL. My bouncing belly was a little too much for the XL and it started to slide up. No matter what I did, I couldn't keep it down. So by about two tenths of a mile I had resigned myself to run the next 6 miles with what amounted to a 'Sports Bro' (or a 'Sports Manzierre'). I looked at my watch at the first mile split and was shocked to find that I had run an 8:57 mile, a new PR. The rest of the race went fairly typical. Most of my splits came back a few seconds over 10:00. At the turnaround I could see 4 people behind me, which made me happy not to be last. I took water at about 4 miles. The volunteers were helpful and encouraging. At about the 6 mile mark I got 'chicked' by one of the ladies behind me, fun, yeah I didn't have a shot at staying ahead of her. She must have been running 8 mm when she passed, I think I felt a breeze coming off her. I ended up finishing with a PR of 1:02:08 by my watch, no chip times, so I don't care what number they come up with. Most of the race I had been watching the other participants noticing that young males were really not represented well. By the time I finished I had convinced myself that there was only one or two other 20-29 year old males that had run the 10k. So instead heading out afterwards I tried to find the results sheet. It wasn't posted, but they said they'd post it and then hand out medals. Ten minutes stretched into an hour and finally they had printed something and were reading out names from the 5k. Almost immediately though people were calling out that things were amiss, so and so finished ahead of what's his face, that sort of thing. After an hour and a half of waiting I went up to the head table to ask if they could just tell me how many people were in the 20-29 male age group for the 10k. They told me they were still trying to straighten out the 5k. I decided at that point that it wasn't worth it to hang around, since I had friends due at my house from downstate and I was 40 minutes from home. Today they finally posted the results on runmichigan.com I found out I was right, 3rd place in my age group, so if I would have stayed I would have gotten a (lack of competition) bronze medal.