I Care 5K

I was up and down last night with Nathan and Kim as he hand a tummy ache and started puking at about zero-dark-30 and puked twice more in the next hour after that. Kim thinks he drank too much soapy water in the bathtub last night. I think I'll start calling it the barftub now.

I woke up around 0630, ate some Cheerios and drank my two cups of coffee. I checked the Weather Channel around 0800 and saw that it was 45 with 15 mph winds out of the west and a wind chill of 33. I threw on tights, a long sleeve shirt and my jacket for a quick one mile warm-up mile in 7:50. After that I hopped in the car and drove to Sherman.

I got to Sherman, grabbed my packet, ran another mile to warm-up with a hard two minute surge at the half mile mark and changed into my flats. After that I stood around trying to stay loose as the race was running a bit behind schedule.

At 0945 we went to the line, got our instructions and got going. I'd been looking at the faces on the line and based on the fact that no one was lining up directly on the line I began to despair that I was going to have a lonely, blustery race ahead of me. As the gun went off I came off the line in the lead with two other people off either shoulder. I took it easy for the first sixty seconds and threw a hard surge off the first turn into a slight downhill. After that it was a race against the clock.

The course wound around a sub-division in Sherman that had a few rolling hills but nothing incredibly intimidating. It was enough to make you change your turnover but not enough to sap you too much and there were enough downhills to surge on that I felt pretty good the whole way.

I hit the mile mark in 6:40.94 but it felt more like a 6:10-6:20. I was pretty disgusted and quit looking at my watch after that. I had two high school kids on bikes acting as my pacers so I made a game of trying to catch them. I talked to them after the race and they said they were trying to keep ahead of me so that I didn't catch them. I would gain ground and get within three or four seconds of them and they would look back and crank the pedals for a few seconds to extend their lead.

Apparently my game made me run super fast the second mile because I hit the two mile mark in 12:20.88 having covered the distance in 5:39.94. I think the mile mark was long.

After the two I pretty much had the wind to my back and two wily high school boys on bikes ahead of me so I tried to keep running strong and maintain my form. I started to hurt a little but before I knew it I could see that I was within a half mile of the finish line and I kicked it in, passing three in 18:54.35 with a 6:33.47 mile split and finished off the last 0.1 in 37.74 with a watch time of 19:32.09.

The second place finisher was right around 21:00 - 21:10.

I drank some water, ate a banana and watched my Hardy Breed pal Jason finish third in the 10K and then I ran backwards(on the course, I didn't actually run in reverse) to catch IronMartha and run the last bit of the race with her. She was the third overall woman in the 10K with a sub-49:00 two weeks after completing her first Full Ironman.

Frankly, I'm astounded that I ran as fast as I did in what amounted to a solo time trial. I thought I would run that fast only if there was more company. Apparently I'm in better shape than I thought I was or the course was only three miles long.

I guess I'll have to come back and defend my title next year.