Greg's Running Blog

I have signed up for a 10K for the end of February as my first race. And since I’m not big on doing things in a half ass fashion and I’m an all or nothing kind of guy I started a training program for the race 3 weeks ago. This training plan calls for all kinds of running speeds and distances throughout the training period and this past weekend it called for a 5K race. I could have just ran around the block at race speeds but where is the fun in that? So my co-worker told me about a race that was coming up this past Saturday. We both contemplated going and in the end he chickened out but I went.

Why did he chicken out? I think it had a lot to do with the weather. Here in Texas weather can be very fickle. We had temperatures in the 70s (22+ Celsius) two weeks ago but the weekend forecast was 24 degrees (-4C) with a windchill factor of 16F (-9C). And sure enough they were right. The weather was brutally cold on Saturday morning. I’m not a morning person so getting out of the warm bed and drive to the race at the crack of dawn in freezing temperatures was a double whammy. But I did it with excitement and great anticipation.

I have not ran in a race environment for almost 20 years. You see, I used to be a long distance runner in junior high and I was pretty good at it to boot. I liked it a lot and I loved the races. But I got burned out and the only thing remained was my appetite which made me gain weight at an incredible pace. Fast forward 20 years and you get to my October 2009 state which is overweight and unfit but someone who deep down thinks he can run. Unlike other obese people who probably never ran a mile in their life I was actually a pretty damn good long distance runner with national titles, I’m not from the US originally, in my age group at the time.

So when I showed up at the race at the wee hours of 7:30AM I wasn’t sure if I could really do it. I mean I knew that I could run 5K, it’s 3.1 miles which has been the shortest running distance in my training schedule for the past three weeks but I didn’t know just how well I could run. Based on my previous training runs I figured I should be able to run it around 25 minutes. I didn’t know what 25 minutes would get me in terms of placement as I wasn’t really familiar with big running events like these and the quality and pace of the average runner.

As I looked around I saw all kinds of folks there. Men and women, young ones and old ones, fit ones and fat ones. People in shorts in the freezing cold and others wearing several layers and ski masks just to keep warm. It was quite an interesting sight to witness all these different people with different abilities getting ready to undertake the same race.

There were two race distances, the 5K which I ran and a half marathon as a preparation race for the upcoming Cowtown Marathon where I’ll be running my 10K. Due to the weather a lot of folks who originally were going to run the half marathon have switched over to the 5K race. I have seen bib numbers as high as 700 but all in all there were only 461 finishers, 244 in the 5K the rest in the half marathon. The whole race was pretty laid back and small scale which was probably a good thing for me as the first race.

Since I started moving up to the start line pretty early I got a good solid starting position but I realized that while I was going to run with all the other people I really was only racing myself and the time so the starting position didn’t really matter. Unlike 20 years ago when everything was timed from gun time now everyone runs their own race with a transponder chip on their shoes that measures chip time. At the beginning the crowd was pretty heavy and it took a good quarter mile before people started separating out enough and settling in their paces. To meet my target of 25 minutes I needed an 8 minute per mile pace (5:00/km). After the first quarter mile I was up to a 6:50 pace and felt great. As soon as my heart rate picked up to match the pace I knew that I had to scale it back as I would have been unable to sustain that pace for the entire race. So I slowed down a bit and settled into a 7:35-7:40 pace and kept at it. Things were going great and just as I was passing the 1 mile marker I was seeing the leader already running back. I did the math in my head and I figured there is no way he’s already at the 2.1 mile mark running twice as fast as I. And I was right. I didn’t know ahead of time but the course, while it was an out and back, it was really more like a fork. You ran up one leg of the fork then the other and back to the start. So the leader wasn’t really that far ahead he just came back from the left leg of the fork at this point and soon after I was at the tip of the fork too.

As soon as I turned around I got hit smack in the face by some super cold wind which was blowing like there was no tomorrow. It definitely slowed me down and my pace started to fade while my heart rate kept on climbing. My pace dropped down to the 7:50-8:10 range and I figured as long as I keep it close to the 8 minute mark I should be able to finish under 25 minutes thanks to the extra time I picked up earlier. As I was getting closer and closer to the end there were a couple of people passing me. But as they were passing me I felt that their pace, cadence and composure is in a lot worse shape than mine and I thought they were struggling more than me. I felt like I still got the efficiency I once had and I still had the mechanics of running down pat. I felt great. As I was getting closer to the end my heart rate kept on climbing ever higher to places I didn’t think it could climb. So I took back a notch from my pace and slowed to 8:30 pace by the last 200 yards. I knew I ran faster than 25 minutes but I didn’t know how much faster until I ran through the finish line and saw that I finished the race in 24:04. That is almost a minute better than I thought I was going to run. I was very happy with my result. I finished 35th overall out of the 244 finishers which made me feel great. First place? 17:41 by an 18 year old guy. What impressed me more though was the second place finish of 18:28 by a 34 year old man. I hope to be that guy one day. As for the winner’s time I could have ran circles around him when I was 13, I ran 5K under 16 minutes back then. But that was a different time….

All in all I had a great time and it has given me even more encouragement to look forward my 10K race at the end of February.