I finished the Nestle Art City Days 5K in 19:53, and finally met my
goal of breaking 20 minutes. My splits were 6:37, 6:19, 6:23, and 0:35. (The official results have my time as 19:28...I wish...but their results are suspect.)
I
saw Tom as I was picking up my packet and we warmed up for a mile or
so. He had warmed up earlier so he turned back and I went a little
farther. I made a bathroom stop, warmed up a little more jogging over
to and around the track to check out the finish, and then met up with
Tom again a little before the start. Things were a little
congested at the start, but as I was able to open up I locked into what
I hoped was about a 6:30 pace. It felt a little fast, but I decided to
go for it. I noticed one of Tom's buddies just ahead of me. He finished
in exactly 20:00 last year, so I figured I needed to stay with him. I
felt pretty strong as I pushed up the big hill and was pleased to hear
them call out my first mile split at 6:37. I knew I needed to
keep up my effort to run a sub-6:30 pace for the rest of the race. I
focused, as I had in the first mile, on keeping my legs turning over at
or above 180 steps/min. I was slowly passing a few people, and no one
was passing me, and I felt pretty good. As I began the third mile
I was beginning to feel the effects of pushing the first two. It took a
lot of mental effort to focus on keeping my legs moving, even though it
was mostly downhill. I was struggling a bit, and a few runners passed me
(mostly high school kids I think), but I was keeping up with most of
the other runners so I was still optimistic. As I entered the
parking lot and then the track I was confident I could hold on. As I
passed the 3 mile marker on the track I quickly glanced at my watch and
thought I saw 19:1x. I figured I still had 40 to 50 seconds to go half a lap and was going to make it. I then saw a runner a little in
front of me that I thought might be in my age division. I decided to
play it safe and just pass him, which I did rather easily and finished
pretty strongly. It's good I started and stopped my watch
correctly, or I wouldn't know my time. The official results were way
off. They showed my time about 30 seconds faster than what I ran. A lot
of other runners were saying the same thing. Tom didn't even show up in
the results. It turns out anyone who registered this morning before the race were not included in the results, but their times were. They awarded me a plaque for 5th place in my division. Tom's time would have earned 5th in his division as well, but we'll have to wait until they rework and post the results to see the actual results. The
prizes in the raffle were amazing, and nearly all 2000+ entrants stayed
for the drawing. Of course, it doesn't matter how great the prizes are
if you don't win any of them, which I didn't. It was still an awesome
race. I really enjoyed it. | 