Best 5K ever!

Yesterday I had a 5K race. It was supposed to be 50 degrees by racetime. Guess, what? It wasn’t! It was more like 32 degrees. Brrrrr. I had planned on wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt. I wound up in spandex and two shirts. Where, oh where is spring? At least it was sunny.

The course was as about as flat as can be along a rail trail. 1.5 miles out, turn around, run back. There were probably close to 200 runners ready to run. A nice turnout for a Sunday afternoon. I saw a lot of familiar faces.

Due to the Boston bombing, frustration at work and some personal issues, I had lots of pent up energy. My last race was a very hilly 15K with an injured hip. The hip is healed  now and I was determined to break my 26:16 record for a 5K. I have also gone back to my old style of running. I’m not an elite runner. I have no business trying to run like one. If you want to run faster, then you need to run faster. That was the running tip going through my head. I’ve always worried about running out of energy at the end so I tend to slow down after the first mile. Not this race. For this race, I was going to run a fast first mile and a second mile and even a third mile. Long stride, hands slightly high, how my body likes to run. I’ve been running long distances with a pretty good pace. 5K should be nothing.

I lined up just behind the front runners. When the race director said Ready, Set, Go! I started running. I ran the first mile in 7:46. That’s really fast for me. Everything felt good, except for the cold air burning my lungs, so I just kept running as fast as I could. Cold air be damned. Mile two was run at a pace of 8:08. There was no way I could keep a pace of 7:46, but 8:08 is still very fast for me. Mile two is where I usually lose speed and runners pass me. Not today. A few young guys managed to get by me, but this time I was passing the slower runners in front of me. With the finish line in sight, I decided to try for a little more speed. As the clock neared, I saw a time of 24:12. Woohoo! Finding all the energy I had left, I crossed the finish line with a time of 24:30.

I’m still waiting on the official results to see how I did overall, but there were a lot of runners coming in behind me.

Good race!

Stats:

3.1 miles, 24:30 minutes, 7:59 pace (yeah!)

Update: Results have finally been posted and I came in 42 out of 131. Not bad. Not bad at all.