When you sign up for a race a few weeks or months in advance, you never quite know what you're going to bring on race day. As it happens, I wasn't playing my "A" game this weekend. Or maybe even my "B" game for that matter. With a total of one hour of sleep on Friday (and no, it wasn't the girls this time!) and what could best be described as a "rough" Saturday, I was thinking pretty seriously about bagging Sunday's race. But the shirt was cute, and as I have said before, I won't wear the shirt without successfully completing the race. So off we went.
I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around the difference between Universal Sole's all-female race and Fleet Feet's all-female race. There were maybe 200 runners at She's Got Sole. We brought the girls, and it was so refreshingly uncrowded that we were able to get close parking, and I was able to pick up my chip with about 30 minutes to spare. However, as soon as we even *approached* parking at the beach on Sunday, I gathered that Fleet Feet was not kidding around. Parking at Montrose was already closed, and police were rerouting traffic. I jumped out of the car so I would have time to pick up my chip, leaving Dean to deal with finding parking and getting the girls over to the race start. I think, all told, Fleet Feet drew 2,000 women for this event.
I think I forgot to thank Dean for bringing the girls to my latest races, especially given what a hassle it is. But I do appreciate it and definitely enjoy having them at the finish line!
I had finished my previous 5K at 31:23. My goal for the summer (well, initally, the goal was targeted toward fall) was to get my 5K under 30 minutes. I'd hoped to do that at this race. But a few days before, I realized how much that would mean off each mile split and figured it probably wasn't going to happen. Initially, when my times were really, really slow, I was shaving minutes off my finish at each race. But as I get faster, I'm noticing that my times are beginning to improve more slowly.
Anyhow, as I'd been feeling pretty crummy all weekend leading up to the race, I kind of gave myself an "out" while I was running. It's surprising to me how much of even the 5K is mental. I can see it with a longer road race like the ten-miler or the half-marathon. You start focusing on how much farther you have ahead of you, and you start to feel tired just thinking about it. The 5K is short enough that the distance isn't an issue. But I can really do a number on myself just thinking about what pace I'm probably running and how maybe I'd like to slow down for a few minutes and how maybe I'll just run it for fun and not time. I'd actually brought my ipod with me for this race (a first) to try and shut down some of the mental noise, but the headphones bugged me, so I ditched them about halfway in.
I've turned a very short story into a rather long one, but as this is my blog, I figure it's my right. I mean, no one is *forcing* you to read this! ;)
In any case, I knew as I was approaching the finish line that it was going to be very, very close. And it was. My watch time was 30 minutes, and I spent the morning wondering whether I might have actually done it. My watch time is usually a bit off from the chip time (but the watch time is usually better than the chip time so I must be starting my watch too late....). Fleet Feet had the times posted within hours (Go FF!!). The verdict? 30 minutes, 2o seconds.
21 seconds, people. I was 21 seconds away from breaking 30. And yet, when I think back over my run, I truly believe that I couldn't have done it any faster than I did. So I'll take it and be happy with it. I beat my previous 5K time by 1 minute and 3 seconds. And I dare say that my next 5K should put me under 30—so long as I keep up the speed training.
The best part was looking at my splits. I ran at a pace of 9 minutes, 44 seconds. When I first started racing back in November, I remember thinking that I'd be happy once I was running in the nine-minute-mile range because that seemed decent enough. But—of course—I'm already thinking ahead to how great it would be to run in the 8-minute-mile range.
My rankings have (obviously) improved considerably from my very first race. Initially, I was at the bottom of both overall rankings and age-group rankings. It's kind of disheartening to look at race standings and realize that only a handful of people did WORSE than you. But that, at least, has changed! For Sunday's race, I ranked about 300 in a field of 1000. And I was in the top 27 percent (if I did my math right) for my age group. If I had broken 30 minutes, my age-group ranking would have dropped from 66th to 48th. Just 21 little seconds are enough to bump your ranking 18 places!
We tried to get some good race photos, but this is the best I've got. Imagine, then, how bad the others must have been! Fleet Feet did have photographers on the course, so if those photos are decent (which is iffy--it's hard to take a good photo while running), I'll post them.
I suppose the conclusion of this race report is this: I'm slowly getting faster!
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