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October 5, 2009
obligatory post about a race, and some more running
So I ran this 5k Saturday.
Short story: it was either a PR by half a second, or 2s slower than my PR, or somewhere in between. Also, I won. Also, I sort of beat this Fabulous Masters Runner I have idolized forever and never thought I would beat.
Much longer story:
Temps had moderated some since our little cool front earlier in the week, but Saturday morning was a relatively delightful 71F with only 76% RH.
The Fabulous Masters Runner was there doing her traditional week-before-the-marathon-5k (we used to be in the same club and trained with the same coach, so I know) and she's been training so well I figured she'd easily get back under 19 with this race. My goal was a certain pace so I wasn't really out to beat her or stay with her or anything, but I thought it would be nice to be able to keep her in sight.
After a false start we got underway, too fast, around 6min pace for the first quarter/third. I felt fine but made a point of slowing down. By the first mile I'd passed all the women except FMR, who was 5s in front of me. I knew that she typically took it easy the 2nd mile so I resolved 1) not to get complacent, and 2) to use her to pull me along in the 3rd mile once she started to roll. I was actually looking forward to watching her pick it up, because I'd never run this close to her before and wondered what she looked like running flat-out.
2nd mile was a touch slower than the first, but I still felt amazingly good for this point in the race so I pushed on. Found myself getting closer and closer to FMR, but after that race in June where I passed her and led for about 45 whole seconds before she steamed back by me, I was not going to pass unless I felt I could put her away. I figured I'd just run right behind her for a bit until she started her famous kick. Then at 2.5mi, she pulled off the course and stopped her watch. She yelled something encouraging as I passed and I yelled something encouraging back, and then I finished the race in abject terror that she was going to come back and pass me. She never did (in fact, she stopped a total of 4 times in that last 1200m).
As I got close to the clock I saw low 19s - cool! - so I tried to pick it up. My 5K PR - set on this course 2 years ago - is 19:18, and this time I went under the clock just as it flipped from 19:17 to 19:18. Hit my watch at 19:19. At the awards they announced 19:20. So it could've been a PR, but it officially wasn't.
6:17, 6:19, 6:20, 5:58p (last bit). Someone who asked about my splits said, on hearing the answer, "that means you could've gone a little faster if you'd just tried harder."
GPS said 3.07mi. On this same course I've had readings ranging from 3.05 to 3.15, so who knows. The course is certified, but it can be a little long or short depending on exactly where they set up the finish line.
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While I'm happy with this race (especially at this point in marathon training, with 9 or 10 weeks to go), I'm a little bummed to realize that I still have head-problems regarding races. It's gotten a lot better. I used to spend the entire day before a race obsessing about the race, worrying about pain, scared my legs would fail me, scared I'd fail somehow. And all for some lousy 5k that wasn't even a goal race, imagine that. This time, I wasn't thinking much about the race itself but something wasn't right - all day Friday I was distracted, unable to concentrate, constantly on the edge of a foul mood. And although I wasn't actually thinking about the race, I knew all this was because of the race. And it lasted all day and through the night and through my warmup and right up to the moment when the horn actually went off. So yeah, it's gotten better, but it still stinks that I wasted an entire day in a funk about something that actually turned out ok.
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Sunday I met up with some former-club people (including FMR) for a medium-long run. I wanted to do 17 miles with 8 miles around 7:15-7:20 pace. I ran the hard miles with some very peppy young people who were nice enough to drag an old lady along. Somehow - O2 debt? early dementia? - I managed to add an extra "work" mile in there so the workout portion became 9 miles @7:17. While I was very happy with the run, I was pretty useless the rest of the day. This morning I got up and ran a bit over 8 miles like a little old lady with glass bones.
Posted by joe positive at October 5, 2009 8:34 AM
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Comments
Awesome!
Posted by: Mindi at October 5, 2009 7:41 PM
That's good! Nice to be close to your 5k PR two years on. An encouraging sign for the marathon. I like that you ran it as a race, rather than for a time - good 'win' over FMR.
Maybe more regular racing (every couple of weeks?) would help with the pre-race funk?
Posted by: Ewen at October 6, 2009 4:37 AM
! yeah !
Posted by: corradogiambalvo at October 10, 2009 11:05 AM