I finally cracked 20 minutes on a 5K! What a dang tough race in the heat!
I had a sub 20 goal in mind for today and was looking around for someone at the start who would be willing to pace me for the race. I didn't have to look far, as a couple of my Ragnar teammates were looking to run at about that same pace. The only problem was one of them was running the 10K but he is really fast and was looking to run a 40 minute 10K so the plan was to keep these two close. I started off about 20 minutes before the race with a fairly easy 1 mile warm-up and also did a few quick strides in that mile to loosen things up. I lined up behind a bunch of high school kids at the start and we were off, well sort of. It seems some of the high school kids were a little over confident about their abilities so I found myself weaving through bodies for the first quarter mile. Once we got out of the pack it was just me and one ragnar buddy and a few high school cross country kids out in front that we were never going to catch. Our first half mile was pretty fast for this course as the first mile is very slightly up hill so we pulled it back just a little and our first mile came in about where I wanted it at 6:22. By this time my second ragnar buddy had caught up to us and we were into a nice rythm, not feeling great, but surviving. By some miracle I was able to hang on during the second mile and it came in right at 6:22 as well. The third mile I really started to fall apart but so did one of my running partners. We ended up dropping the first partner who was running the 5K but the 10K guy stuck with me and really kept me on pace. He stayed with me until about a half mile to go when I decided it was time to put the pedal down and get the sub-20. My Garmin pace during mile three read as high as 6:39 but ended up coming in at 6:31 thanks to the extra effort in the last half mile. At the finish I had to warn a few of the 1 mile walkers that I was coming in and had to do a little weaving to get around them and at this point I knew I had it. It was awesome to see the 19 still on the clock as I crossed the line. The course was about 60-70 meters short according to Garmin but I think my time is still under 20 minutes even with the extra distance. I think the only reason I ended up in first for the 5K is that many of the fast runners were running the 10K. I'll take the first place finish even though it comes with no medals or prizes, a win is a win. Sub 20 was my only goal for the day, the win only added a little icing to the cake. | 