Celebration of Running 5k Race Report

This morning, I woke up and calculated my half mile splits the whole way through the 5k and looked up where each point was located on gmap-pedometer.com so I could keep my goal pace.

I was trying to hit 23 minutes, so my goal splits were:  3:42, 7:24, 11:06, 14:48, 18:30, 22:12, 23:00.  I started the race only a few feet back from the starting line to make sure I was in my correct pace group.  I went out a little fast, but it felt good.  I tried to stay with a few of the people in my training group.  I did that through half a mile and noticed I was going out a little too fast.  Again, it felt good, so why mess with it.  I hit the mile in 6:45.  That's 39 seconds faster than my goal pace, but I was at the tail end of my training group and I thought that maybe I had improved.  I don't remember what my 1.5 split was, but my 2 mile split was 14:06.  Now I was 42 seconds ahead of pace.

I had my splits on a small piece of paper like a cheat sheet.  When I hit the 2 mile clock that far ahead, I crumbled it up and threw it on the street.

That's about when it started to not feel good.

I definitely started to slow down by the time I was at 2.25.  I got a cramp in my right abdomen around 2.5, so I stopped and walked for about 10 seconds taking very deep belly breaths.  I got back on my horse and finished up.  It was a pretty weak last half mile even though I did a little sprint to cut a few seconds.  I finished in 23:07.

I had a 42 second lead on my goal pace heading into the last mile and finished 7 seconds off.  Talk about crash and burn.  I definitely have more speed, but I need to work on my stamina.

I need to incorporate long runs every single week and make sure that they are more than 6 miles.

This was my second best time since turning 30yo.  My over 30 PR is 22:27 in 2008.  40 seconds away.  I was close and let it slip.  Hopefully, I can beat that mark the next 5k.