5K Race

[Yesterday: 3.1 miles]

I participated in a 5K race (3.1 miles) yesterday.

I don’t do a lot of racing.

I thought it went pretty well.  I started off at medium speed, steady.  The first part of any race has a big sorting as fast people pass and slow people get passed.  This race had a lot of kids in it, which is a good thing, but the kids like to line up right at the line… so the real speedy adults have to get through the crowd even like us slow pokes.  I started far back in the crowd and got off pretty well and didn’t trip anybody or get tripped.

We had come to this race because my wife wanted to meet in person some friends from an internet running group she is in.  Nice people.  One other was running the 5k and she was about my speed, so I kept her in sight at the beginning and caught up with her enough to have a bit of a chat.  Being able to talk, or not talk is a useful measure of the level of effort.  And it helps me settle my mind down because my group running usually involves a lot of talking.

Approaching the first mile mark I was feeling pretty good and started to pull away a bit.  We turned off the secondary road into a residential neighborhood and I was going along at a good steady clip, with the feeling that I get when it’s toward the end of a Saturday morning group run and we’re all picking up the speed a little as we approach the end.

I was still passing kids all this time, some of them very small, many with an adult.  Even later at 2 miles there were a few that were zooming for 100 yards, then walking, then zooming again.  There were probably some that zoomed the whole way, but I never passed those!  My 5K racing is usually in the old-folks and mothers- pushing-a-stroller crowd. But for this race it was nice to have some more variety.

Anyway,  I kept up my pace in the residential area and back out on to the secondary road to return to the start/finish.  That got us to the two mile marker.  I felt pretty good.  I was hoping I could put in a bit of a kick at the finish line but I could tell that my tank of energy was being depleted.  Would I make it before running out of gas?

Coming down the road I tried to keep up the pace  (which probably means I was slowing down).  We turned a corner into a ball-field area and my mind was saying, “time for the big finish!” but my legs weren’t doing anything extra.  Ok, well, keep going then.  So we did that.

And I got in when the big timer said 56:something.  But the big timer was for the half marathon so I didn’t know what my time was.  I was satisfied because I had done all I could for today.

Later I looked up my time on the results page and found that I had not quite met my goal of under 30 minutes.  It was 30:26 (chip time) for a 9:55 pace.  I am happy I broke 10 minute pace.