New PB... of sorts

It's been a long time since I have run a 5km race stand alone, that is without running with my 11 year old son. This time however I ran on my own and hit a PB of 22:48 for a 5km. Although I have run faster than this is training many times, it is the only "official" 5km time I have. So there it stands! If you have read my blog at all you'll see that my times I have wanted to get a sub 20 5km in and I'm thinking that this will be the year (my year runs from November 21st to November 21st!).

So like every race I will do a race report!

The night before the race I worked. We had Chicken Delights from the penatly box for dinner. We had a quiet night at work so I was well rested. I made sure to drink lots of water and was well Hydrated.

The morning of the race I got up at 6:15am. I had a piece of toast and a banana. Not really the meal I would have chosen, but that's what I had. The guy that came into cover me brought me a coffee from Mc Donalds. I was out the door at 6:45am. It was cold and raining, I called Mike and asked him if he would rather go drink instead but he insisted that he run his 10km (his time for the 10km was 1:02:00) so we me at the bus terminal. My friend Jeff and his Wife Rebecca were there to come over with us since they had the day off also. Off we went to the City of Detroit MI via the tunnel bus.

It was crazy down there. You would have thought the Marathon was taking place, they had close to 18,000 people in the race (1mile, 5km and 10km) They had people in corrals just like the marathon and they actually had a "fast and fit" group ( 8 minute miles and less) that went off first and a "fun" group that went off 15 minutes later. I was in the fast group. We hung around for a bit, I handed my I.D and stuff off to my friends and was off to the corrals. It had stopped raining but was stil a bit chilly. It was tough to figure out what to keep on. Of course I made the wrong decision and kept all my layers on. I knew I should have taken off my coat, but decided against it, in retrospect I should have worn shorts too considering how much I heat up.

The race started. I had myself about 30 seconds behind the starting line. Again I should have placed myself up closer to the start (damn retrospect) I felt good. I was running at a talking pace to start and had to constantly go by people that should have started further back. At the same time there were those fools who start too fast and was being bumped and cut off a bit for the first 500 meters. I did not bring my watch so I can't give splits or anything and I totally missed the 1 mile marker and had know clue how far I was until I hit the 2 mile marker. At the 2 mile marker I had picked up the pace a bit and started to overheat. I didn't feel tired, just too hot so I didn't push the pace and faster. At this point I thought I was running at about 7:45 to 8:00 minute miles. I was a bit deflated because I felt it took alot of time weaving in and out of the slower people at the start and I really thought I would finish at around 24:30ish. It was at about the 2.5 mile mark where I picked the person I was going to pass (it ws a guy that passed me a while back) I slowly picked up the pace and slowly reeled him in, once I hit the 3 mile mark I just gave it to the finish and passed him with no effort. I was suprised to see the clock at sub 23:00 coming up to it.

Overall I felt really good about the time. Considering I walked in to it with nothing special in mind. I did some pretty good workouts in the days before the race so I was a bit tired. Like I told the customs official my goal was 23 minutes. I felt great after the race took about 15 minutes to cool down.

What can I do to improve my performance? Eat better, train for a 5km and actually be ready to race!



 





me right after the race...crazy eyes!