Meriden Rotary Club Daffodil Festival 5K Race Report

I was scheduled to race at the Wrentham Duathlon on April 17th, but a combination of unpredictable weather and the distance from home led me to re-evaluate my plans for the weekend.  Ultimately I

decided that after being sick earlier in the week, riding in a potential rain storm with 40mph winds may not be a good idea.  Also, I needed to drive up the night before, as my tri bike is still unassembled after being shipped back from Miami.  Once the morning came, the rain was over but it was still very windy.  I was feeling guilty after not racing the duathlon.  I was able to find a 5k that wasn’t far from home and decided at the last minute to go.    I made it to registration with minutes to spare.

 

I was familiar with the road the race was run on, as it is the first portion of road that leads to a well known, popular mountain that is used frequently on the group rides that I go on. 

I knew it was going to have a pretty steep uphill at the beginning, then a bunch of rollers; then the opposite on the way back.  Luckily we didn’t keep running straight, or we would have been heading up one of steepest 2 mile stretches of road around.  However, this would have been the view from the top (taken from a previous visit):

Here was the final elevation profile.  So between the course and the incessant wind, this did not look like a day for a fast time.  This works out to 544 feet of climbing in just 3.1 miles.

Sadly my support crew was unable to make the race.  Here are some shots I found from the local newspaper – I am the last person to the right in the blue top warming up.

Just a small local race, so here is the field.  Again, I’m way to the right behind the kid in red.

And we’re off…

The start was gently downhill and good for getting up to speed.  The real runners and cross country kids immediately pulled away at sub 6 min/mile pace.  The winner was one of these kids and he averaged below 5:30 min/mile!

 

After the short downhill stretch we turned left and immediately started the biggest climb of the race.  Luckily the wind was generally behind us up the hill.  I actually made it up the hill pretty well, but was at my limits.  I was also leading a small pack of runners.  I tried to back down the pace a little after the uphills to recover and work the climbs as much as I could.  As we approached the halfway I was surprised that I hadn’t lost as much time as I was expecting with the uphill course.

 

After we turned around it was into a significant headwind.  I was looking for help and found it behind big blue #78 above.  This kid was huge and perfect for drafting.  I stuck with him through most of the rollers until we reached the 2.5 mile mark.  At this point it was just he and I, with the rest of the group we were running with on the way out now a few hundred yards back.  As we approached the big downhill he put in a surge on the last uphill I couldn’t respond to.  I had to let him go as my heart rate was through the roof.  But now it was almost all downhill to the finish.  I was flying down the hill, at about 6:45 pace but my legs were taking a pounding.  I definitely need to work on this as my legs get destroyed by steep downhills – probably a form problem.  I kept looking back to see if anyone from behind was catching up.  There was one guy who was making a big effort and was getting closer.

 

As I reached the last right turn and slight uphill to the finish, he had closed down to probably about 100 yards.  I was really resolved to not let him catch me so I mustered what little sprint I still had in me to the finish.  I was able to hold him off by just a few seconds.

 

It was a good thing I did as he was in my age group.  Which resulted in me taking first in my age group.  Admittedly this was only because the field was weak in my age group, with only 4/113 people being M30-39.  Also my “winning” time was much slower than a lot of the other categories.  But it was a new PR for me at the 5K distance by about 45 seconds, and almost 3 minutes faster than the 5k a month ago.  Given the difficulty of the course, I am feeling good about being able to hit my goal of a sub 21:45 race by the end of the year.

 

I finished in 22:46 which was first in M30-39 and 23rd overall out of 113.

 

Here are the splits:

And here is the full trophy!