daisy 5k

So yesterday morning I ran the Daisy 5K. The course was on the east side, starting at the Rogue store on East 5th, running down to Lady Bird Lake around Martin Middle School and back. It was slightly downhill on the way out, meaning it was slightly uphill on the way back, but I'd say for an 5K in Austin, it's about as flat as it gets. It was definitely less hilly that the Starflight 5K I ran last weekend.

It was kinda warm. It was supposed to be in the low 60s, but it was really more like upper 60s. But on the plus side, there was very little humidity. Nevertheless, after doing my 2 mile warm-up, I was warm enough that I ditched my shirt with Pat, who was loitering around by the start/finish.

I had shown up the same time as Lou, and when I asked him if he wanted to warm up, I found out something interesting... He doesn't run before races. He just stretches. (It apparently works for him as he got second in his age group.)

Even though he had already done some warm-up, Rogers jogged part of the way out with me. I tried to make some mental notes about the course, but the only notable thing was that the last straightaway after turning onto 5th was about 600 meters, which seems like a pretty long way to go for a finishing kick.

There was a kind of odd format for this race. They let the women start 3:00 minutes early. I was guessing that this meant we'd be running into traffic pretty quick once we started running, but I figured maybe the race organizers had accounted for this and would try to help some of the faster guys get through without too much trouble. It turned out that it wasn't actually crowded enough to be too much of an issue. The group I left with started catching up with some of the women before we got off 5th (~600m or so), and though we had to snake our way through, it wasn't so packed that it slowed you down that much.

As expected, I was tight and sore from this week's workouts, but I felt decent enough during the first mile. So I was bummed to hit the first mile marker at 6:12. Granted, finding my way through the slower runners cost me a little time (as did almost stopping to ask a woman about her stroller/baby seat combo), but 6:12 was slower than I expected.

I have a vague memory of deciding that I need to try to sustain this pace and not slow down too much, but I must have backed off a little once I started to feel less comfortable. The second mile was 6:30. Hmm, once again, much slower that I would have expected. And I was falling into the same pattern as last week. Damn.

For the final mile, I resolved that I at least wasn't going to slow down any more. I had gotten passed by 3 guys at about 1.75 miles, and I managed stick with them all for the time being. I wasn't feeling great, but I don't remember ever thinking that I wanted to stop (which is a feeling I often have, by the way).

I passed 2 of the 3 guys that had passed me, and then as I got close to the corner of Comal and 4th, I saw DV and Pat waiting for me. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I swear they had a "where the hell have you been?" look on their faces. My first thought when I saw them was, "oh crap, I'm not ready to pick it up yet". We were probably about 800m from the finish. Nevertheless, I'm glad they were there because I needed a little motivation. I picked it up a little and continued to surge when I went down 5th and finally caught the 3rd guy who had passed me earlier right around the 3 mile marker. It wasn't fun, but I kept up my pace until I hit the finish.

Mile 3 was a pretty mediocre 6:23, and I ran the last 200 in 35 seconds. My final time was 19:40, so it's a good thing DV and Pat paced me for that last stretch, because I probably would have been 5-10 seconds slower if they hadn't.

Obviously, I wasn't happy about being 10 seconds slower than last week, but based on how tired I was from the workouts this past week, I didn't have very high expectations. Lou ran a little slower as well, so maybe the workout excuse has some legitimacy...

I saw a couple of other Gazelles who ran pretty good times: Kyle ran 18:19, Jesse Devlyn (who I met for the first time) ran 18:18, Rogers ran 18:41 and Lou ran 19:14. I also got to see Michelle and Ashley Maton for the first time in a while. They ran 20:36 despite Michelle hardly running at all lately. I was expected to see some other nooners, but perhaps they had trouble waking up so early.

I think the main thing I learned from this race was that I need to just suck it up. I've kind of become a huge wimp, and seem to backing off the moment I start to feel uncomfortable. The problem is that, in a 5K, you get that feeling pretty early on. What happens is that I worry that I need to save something for the finish when what I should be thinking is that it's only 3 freaking miles and it will be over soon enough. I need to trust my fitness a little more. When I first saw Pat and DV, I didn't think there was any chance I'd be able to pick it up because my legs were feeling so heavy for the last mile and a half. But thanks to the extra motivation, I found a way to make it happen. So in the future, I need to remember that I probably have a little more left than I think. I mean, I've run substantially faster than this, and I'm definitely in better shape right now than I've ever been.

Normally, at this point I'd throw in a little bitching about the Arsenal game, but this entry is already to freaking long, so I'll just mention that they played a disappointing game against a mediocre team and came away with a tie. As a result, Man U is now in first place in the Premiership.

To make up for my lack of a long run this week, I ran 6 easy miles with my co-worker Kurt this morning at about a 7:40-7:45 pace. Since I now have less than a month before taking some time off, I'm considering trying to work in some kind of tempo-y run this week to make up for my lame 5K, but I'll consult with Gilbert to see what he thinks.

In other news, I put together our jog stroller this afternoon. Of course, I won't be able to run with it for 7-8 months but, you know, I needed to make sure I knew how it worked. Less than two weeks to go until el beskrownito moves in.