The Memorial Day Local 5K

Ran the local 5K yesterday just to give myself a shot at breaking 16 minutes for the 5K before I get into base building again for the marathon in October. I feel like since peaking for the marathon a few weeks ago, I definitely lost some of the edge that I had. I've backed off of most really fast speedwork lately and have just not felt real sharp.

Anyway, Saturday morning I woke up and didn't feel great, but that seems to be pretty typical for me on race morning. I think I let my nerves get the best of me sometimes. This is a very small race, but sampling the crowd before the race there did seem to be some fairly fast looking guys warming up, so I was hopeful there would be someone to push me in those early miles.

Little did I know that I would come out of the gate completely flat. The goal for the race was to come through mile 1 as close to 5 minutes as possible. For some reason, I was really struggling right from the gun on this race and came through mile 1 in 5:10 and probably more worrisome, I was really working hard. At this point in the race, it was just me and one other guy by ourselves. I didn't recognize him and had no idea if he would be with me the whole race or not. He had about a 10 yard lead on me at mile 1.

Finally around 1.5 miles, I passed the guy and with that pass, finally, things started to click. I started feeling good again and things seemed like they were clicking. Even with the renewed confidence, mile 2 passed in a rather pedestrian 5:20 which gave me 5:30 to cover the remaining 1.1 miles. I knew the chances weren't good, but I also knew that I was feeling pretty good at that point.

I hit that last mile hard, thinking back to all the hard intervals I put in, in preparation for the marathon. Because of the sluggish first 2 miles, I was feeling strong at this point in the race and was really hammering now. As I approached the finish line I strained to see the clock and could 15:50...15:51. I sprinted as hard as I could for the tape and came in right at 16:00 flat.

Grrr....

so I'm mildly dissapointed but it's still a 23 second PR and I did run that last mile in 5 flat, so I know I can faster with a little bit better preparation. All in all, I'll take it.