Notes
Well, this sucked. If I was being honest with myself I knew that the likelihood of me going sub 21 was pretty unlikely but I did think I’d get a lot closer than this. The reality is that I haven’t run much over the last month and I haven’t run hard since the week before the marathon when I ran mile repeats but I felt border line out of shape today.
Leading up to the race everything seemed to fall in place and I even had an extra hour of sleep with Daylight Savings time. I took a wrong turn on the way to the race but only a few minutes out of the way. Arrived at the school, registered, peed, pinned my race # to my shirt, and I took off to get loose. Ran for about a mile, and then did a bunch of exercises to get loose. Went back to the school for one last potty stop and headed to the finish line. I couldn’t see any runners and thought “uh oh”. The starting line was right where I parked so I hustled over to the car, stripped down, put all the clothes in the truck, and headed over to the starting line. T-short and shorts today. It was cool but nice. As I am fiddling with the iPod and hit play the race director made a few announcements and I was ready. Boom, gun goes off. I’m running super slow based on my conversation with Cremer (trying not to go out to fast) and notice I am running 6:35. Just hold the easy pace and then the iPod shuts off 20 seconds into the run. I thought that was weird and knew this felt slow so I pulled it out of the strapped and started to fiddle with it. Then I dropped it on the ground. Great. I go back about 10 steps and pick it up, noticing that the glass has cracked. Slipped it back into the arm strap and hit play. Good to go. At this point I was worried that this would impact my time or my pace but the reality is that this has nothing to do with how shitty I ran today. Get into a groove and start picking a few people off. The watch hits Mile 1 – 6:43. Perfect. As I begin the second mile I notice that the pace is getting slower and slower. Hovering just under 7 minutes. I don’t feel great and noticed that I’m not easing into the feeling of being warm and loose. Now I’m just tired and there is still 2 miles to go. As I fight the pace I know that I need to keep fighting. Toward the end of mile 2 I start to improve the pace and hit 6:56. I know it’s slow but feel good that I fought the shitty mile and starting to feel better. I feel the pace pick up a little bit and then I hit a little, tiny hill. I mean really small. The size of my driveway small and the pace slows again. 7:11 pace. Fuck. Pick it back up and see the pace is gradually getting better. Now I’m around 6:50 pace. Ok. Hit the corner at the light on West St and try to take it in. My watch reads 3.1 and I’m at 21:14 but there is still what seems like plenty to go on the course. I try to take it in but don’t feel like I’m moving any faster. 21:50. Goddamn is that slow.
The reality of today is that I was fine physically. No niggles that impacted my ability to run. My stomach was great. The course was flat. I’m just not in the same shape I was 5 weeks ago and that’s ok. My thought was that the marathon training would carry me today but that wasn’t the case. Everyone is different and I think I need to be logging lots of miles to crush a 5k which makes sense. Also, no more racing with an iPod. It’s a stupid fucking distraction and a rookie crutch. After a quick exchange yesterday with Hoppity, I’ve realized that 2012 was a great year for me and there’s nothing but improvement ahead of me. I’ll go sub 21 next year. Who knows, maybe even sub 20.