This race was in Tampa Florida at the Al Lopez park which is a nice big "nature" park with lakes & lots of trees. I thought I could get away with dragging the family to this event even though we were on vacation because they could keep themselves occupied looking for alligators & turtles in the lake while I ran. Worked out pretty well in the end. At first they wanted to kill me because we were getting up at 5am while on vacation to drive 1/2 hr. to a race. As we left for the race my 10 yr old son grabbed his running shoes (which he had in FL because he's on a relay team and wanted to practice while in FL) I thought it was odd that he was bringing his racing shoes to my race- but whatever. Then in the car on the way there he asked if he could run the beginning or end of the race with me. I told him "of course, that would be cool!" (Mind you- I'm always trying to talk him into training for a 5k with me, but he always wants to stick with strictly track work and shorter distances) As we got out of the car at the race, the tempation was too great for him & he wanted to race the whole 5k!! SO- I signed him up and he ran a 28:19 (UPDATE, its time was actually 26:03 according to the official results. Boy was I off in my initial posting of Toby's time. Sorry Toby! Way to rock his 1st 5k!!!!!!!!!) for his first ever 5k! Not too shabby! He finished strong and looked great at the finish. I was worried about his recovery since he doesn't usually run more than a couple miles at his track practices- but he did great! He was sore for a couple days- but not sore enough to stop him from skimboarding, swimming or any activity. He took advantage of the free massage at the finish which was a good idea, that probably helped him recover. He should start his own blog- but until then I'll have his race report(s) here. So the race went like this:
We did a 10:22 warm up for 1 mile. Then we ran our own pace for the race. Don't have Toby's splits.
My splits were: 7:15, 7:54, 8:19. There were aid stations every mile and I took advantage of every one to get water. The heat & humidity combo really affects me which makes me feel so whimpy. My legs & lungs wanted to keep going fast, but I felt oppressed by the heat so I kept slowing down considerably each mile. I did beat my previous 5k time by a few seconds, but I really wanted out of the 24:00s. ! On a positive note, I do feel that if I was at home I probably could have pulled off a better time if I wasn't wilting from heat. I'm anxious to run another 5k this summer and see what I can do. Overall, I should be happy that I PR'd in FL, even if not by as much as I wanted. And the day was a great success because Toby ran his first 5k and did OUTSTANDING! We both wanted AD awards, but wasn't in the card for us. (I thought competition would be easier as I got older- HA! If I was in the younger divisions I would have placed, but my division had all the speedies!) Toby was running in the 10-14 group and had some tough high schoolers as competition. | 