Max O’s 5k Race Report – March 14th - Jason

First race of the year was an early chance to gauge the progress on my running.  The verdict is that there is still a long way to go to get where I’d like to be.  That being said there were some encouraging things that came from the race.

 

I’ve been taking it deliberately slow with adding mileage during training to try to prevent any injury which could derail the overall plan.  Shin splints have always been a problem for me, and the slow approach seems to at least be minimizing any shin pain.  My biggest problem is just being inexplicably slow.   Even in training I struggle to maintain a pace below 9:00/mile for more than 10 minutes.  So my goal was simple – try to run the whole way and finish under 30 minutes.

 

Weather for the race was better than forecasted.  This past weekend had record breaking rain, over 5 inches in some parts of CT.  Luckily it did not rain during the race, but roads were wet and the wind was howling, especially thru the buildings downtown.  The best part of this race was that the start line was literally right outside my front door.  The only other running race I’ve done is a few corporate challenge 5K’s in Central Park; this race was in conjunction with St Patrick’s day so it was a lot of fun with many people in costumes.

 

At the start line I put my self about midpack, and initially it was a little bit of a battle to get going, but within 1/4 mile there was plenty of room to move around.  I kind of saw it as a good thing as it allowed you to settle into the proper pace slowly.  My watch was acting up with the tall buildings downtown, so as you can see below I wasn’t getting pace information until about 1/3 mile into the race.

 

 

I saw that I was a little off my pace but not much as I hit the clock at Mile 1.  At this point I found a couple of runners that were maintaining a pace just slightly faster than I was going.  I followed the pair the rest of the course, yo-yoing a few times, which really helped me with proper pacing.  With all the training on the treadmill, pacing was nothing more then pressing buttons.  Unless I’m staring at the pace on the watch, I don’t have too much of a “feel” what my pace is like outside yet.

 

Made it thru Mile 2 and then it was getting tough for me.   Realistically this was approaching the longest non-stop run I’d done in training and the wind had switched to direct headwind and I had a mild side stitch.  I just found the race environment to be pretty motivating and I wanted to keep up with my two pacers.  The downhill thru Bushnell park was pretty fast and I could feel my pace getting faster.  Rounding the corner at Mile 3, with the finish line in sight, a guy next to me said to his running partner that they were close to making it in 29 minutes.  I was in oxygen debt, but he was talking about since the start gun, and I figured if I could be a whole minute faster than my goal I needed to really step on the gas.  Full sprint to the line and my net time was actually 28:05.  And I had run the entire distance.

 

After reviewing the results, I also negative split each mile which I am really happy with.

 

Mile	Pace
1	9:35
2	9:15
3	8:47
Finish	6:30

 

If I’m honest, for this point in the season and the amount of run training I’ve done – I’m happy with the result.  I think with more training and experience I have the ability to go much faster.  Time will tell.

 

Here’s a chart of the race.   No elevation or pace info until the GPS started working at 1/3 mile, but the splits for Mile 1 and 2 are correct.  As you can see pace is a little wild in Mile 1 – it didn’t feel that way so the GPS may have been settling down.  Most of the race was between 8:45 and 9:30 min pace, getting down to 6:30/mile at the finish. You can also see that I need to run in Zone 4 and 5 to achieve that result.   However, I have seen that my HR’s at equivalent efforts are improving over time.

 

 

I really enjoyed the first race of the year and may do a few additional 5K’s as I got a more consistent and harder run in than I would in training, and I think these types of efforts allow you to go harder the next time.