I woke up this morning to the whistling of wind. Today was the annual Turkey Trot. The course is pretty flat, so it is a PR course when the wind isn't blowing hard like it was today. My 5k PR is actually this race, last year of 18:23.
After a warm up run of a little under 2 miles which I finished with a few strides to wake my legs up, we lined up for the race and I realized that the normal fast guys who run 16 minute 5ks weren't there. It appeared that my only competition was going to be a 24 year old who beat me last year by about 10 seconds. The gun went off and off we went. The 24 y.o. went out fast into the wind. I thought about staying with him so I could draft off him, but I didn't want to exert that kind of energy early in the race. The first half mile was into the wind, then we turned and had the wind at our backs for about a mile and a half. Right off the bat the 24 y.o. was about 70 yards ahead of me. After making the turn and getting the wind at our backs I started slowly reeling him in. At the mile mark he was about 50 yards ahead of me. By the 2 mile mark he was only about 20 yards ahead of me. At this point we turned back into the strong wind. I quickly made the decision to expend some energy and pick up my pace so I could get behind him. It only took 30 seconds or so to close the 20 yard gap, then I settled in behind him and let him break the wind for me. It took a bit for me to get my breathing back under control, but then I was able to sit on his shoulder and let him do all the work. I felt like I was coasting and thought about passing him, but then thought better of it. I just stayed there and enjoyed the easy pace until we hit the finale little hill, a little before the 3 mile marker. As soon as the hill started I kicked as hard as I could go and flew by him. He didn't even try to go with me and I cruised to about a 10 second victory.
Yesterday I promised Burt I would yell "Winner, winner, turkey dinner" as I crossed the finish line if I won. I was pretty sure I would not win when I made that promise, but I stayed true to my word and yelled it, which elicited some laughs from the crowd at the finish line. I ended up finishing in 18:30 only 7 seconds off my PR and on a crazy windy day. Over the last 5 months I've done 99% of my training at a low HR, running pretty slow, I guess if you do enough slow running you can actually race fast.
I won a $25 gift card to Safeway for a Turkey Dinner. Doone and Cade ran the race as well and each won their age group! After claiming my award, I changed to my trail running shoes and ran 11 miles home on some crazy, hilly trails with an average heart rate of 141 for a total of 16 miles run today. Now I need to focus solely on my upcoming 50 miler in January.
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