3.05 miles - 18:23
I was putting some pretty substantial pressure on myself to PR today. The reason being that I was running in my employer's yearly 5k race.... and yeah I knew 90% of the people attending. No pressure at all there!
I ran this race two years ago, (different course/my first 5k ever) and finished in a time of 21:52. In April of this year I ran another local 5k and finished in 20:06. My times were definitely heading in the right direction! Needless to say, I was intent on going sub 20:00 today.
On to the race. It was a 10am start and the temperature was hovering right around 70' with little humidity.... perfect weather. In my previous 5k, a 12 year old named Rylee finished 20 seconds ahead of me with a time of 19:46. Here she is.....
As you can see, she is a wispy little thing, but don't let her looks deceive you.... she hauls some butt and her times don't lie.
Anyways.... I have been checking her recent finishes on coolrunning.com and knew that she has been running well as of late and even went sub 19 on a couple of occasions. I was looking for her signature neon orange "RUN" singlet at the start line and found her immediately. I figured that I would just run behind her and see if I could hold on. The muskets fired and we were off. My Garmin got screwed up from the start, so I only have 2.5 miles of data recorded.... no big deal, only the finishing time counts right? (More on that later) This course was really fun with a beginning trail section and lots of neighborhood rolling hills.... nothing to steep or crazy though. The first 2 guys took off and the eventual winner ended up finishing in 16:08. I never saw that guy and I was just trying to stick with the 12 yr old girl. It turns out that since we were running in the second pack, Rylee made a wrong turn and we ended up cutting off .05 miles of this 5k. Bummer :( I was laboring pretty hard keeping about 10ft off of her heels and breathing like a wounded water buffalo. She must have been horrified....... oh well, all is good in racing! With about 2 tenths of a mile left, I passed Rylee and held on for 4th place and a 2 second margin over the speedy 12yr old girl. As I'm crossing the finish line, I see 18:23 on the clock and think to myself..... Holy Crap!
Barely able to catch my breath and my legs wobbling beneath me, I hear someone say, Rylee I guess you missed that turn. I took my hands off of my knees and walked over to the group. "Wait..... what happened?" I said. Like I said earlier in my report, it turns out that we missed a tiny off shoot on the course and chopped off .05 miles of the course. After some calculations, if we hadn't made the mistake, I would have ended up with a 18:44 or so.
I'm really proud of my sub 19:00 finish and the only way that I can make up for the bobble on the course is to race another 5k sooner than later with the same results.
Enjoy the weekend eveyone! | 