Notes
Chip time: 18:05.5 Gun time: 18:06.0 - likely short course
http://results.charmcityrun.com/content/donate-life-family-fun-run-5k-2018
Weather turned out a bit warmer and sunnier than expected (74 vs 68/cloudy) so I was quite warm by the start after the warm up. The start time was delayed by about 10 minutes as well so there was quite a bit of standing at the starting line. I decided to set my watch for 1/4 mile splits so I could get regular feedback without constantly staring at my watch.
Mile 1: I got off to a nice start at what felt relaxed but was probably about 10 sec/mile too fast. The crowd thinned out pretty quick and there was only 1 or 2 runners behind me and a straight line of 5 or 6 ahead of me. My splits stayed pretty consistent for this stretch (85.8, 85.1, 85.7, 87.2 - 5:43.9 total)
Mile 2: At this point, the gaps became fairly large and I was running by myself. There was one runner ahead of me and I was a consistent distance back for a long stretch. The first overpass we crossed felt OK on the uphill, but I might have slowed a bit to recover after the downhill. (88.2, 88.1 96.5 (hill), 92.7 - 6:05.1)
Mile 3: I could feel the runner in front of me slowing so I made the decision to speed up and pass. I might have slowed for a bit too long before passing, but I also think this stretch has some GPS issues. According to the splits there is a discrepancy from moving time & elapsed time. There was a second overpass that I wasn't prepared for late in the race so I probably slowed a bit there as well. By the time we got to the stadium loop there was one more runner pretty far ahead of me. I was hurting at this point but I was gaining slightly. On the final stretch, I had a much bigger kick than expected was able to close the gap and pass right before the finish line for 5th place (100.9?, 92.9, 92.4, 86 - 6:12).
Overall, I was very happy with how the race went except possibly slowing too much in the last 1/3. I smashed my old PR of 19:30 from 2 years ago and hit my goal of Sub-19 for sure. I'm slightly disappointed there is such a discrepancy from the GPS distance and official distance since I was hoping to use this race to pace workouts for the rest of the fall. The most obvious errors were on the overpasses and around the stadium. At least this race confirmed my productive summer and kicking up paces in the fall (~6:00 5k pace).