I wanted to hop into a race to see where I was at basically the beginning of my come back to training after the Chicago marathon a month ago.I knew I would not be that fast and that the race would hurt because I am a few pounds heavy and not in race shape after a break and a shoddy diet for the past few weeks. All in all I am happy with it and I actually felt good and had a lot of fun at a race for a change. It's amazing how you feel running when the dew point is not 60 plus.
The race started slow with a large pack. People were being stupid with the slow pace since I knew all of those guys have easily run in the 15:20s in the past year. I took the lead at 1.5 and increased the pace knowing I would be destroyed by my competitors who had not run a marathon just a few weeks ago. In a way that was a lot of fun. Sure enough by 2.5 they were pulling away, the lactate in my muscles built and no kick was to be had. It was fun.
I ran nice negative splits: 5:08,5:06,5:01,(4:56 pace for the last .1) for 15:54. While not too fast I ran against others, never took a split during the race, and focused on the actually racing others instead of hitting some sort of stupid time and not listening to my body. I know I will quickly chop time off of this after just a few weeks of training. I know this because last year I cruised a 15:31 for 3rd while in good shape two weeks out from Richmond marathon. May not get a chance for a fast 5K until well into next year though.
Results
PM: 1 hr. pool run
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