Sub 20 minute 5K has been a goal of mine for a couple of years now.  I don't run a lot of 5K's though (two last year) and have actually run the same number of half marathons as I have 5K's.  This year I'm making it a point to run a few more.  I like racing and 5K's give you chance to run really hard and recover in a day.  Today my goal was to finally break 20 minutes (6:25 pace).  My PR going into this was 20:18.

Being two weeks removed from my marathon, I knew I wasn't going into this with fresh legs.  I also scouted the course by car last week...it's one of the tougher 5K courses I've run.  Basically 1.5 miles of gentle down, a tough little hill, then 1.5 miles of gentle up.    There a couple of other 5K's in the area today but I wanted to do this one because it's one of those "small local races" and I want to try some of these instead of the same races year after year that the local race giant puts on.  Different courses, different shirts, different swag.

Good race conditions.  55 degrees and overcast.  I lined up on the front row, something I rarely do but I will for smaller races.  Having scouted the course, my strategy was to go out guns blazing for the first 1.5 miles of downhill, then hang on for dear life to the end.

Mile 1:  6:04.  This is a one mile PR by 11 seconds.  I started fast but in control.  I was keeping track of who was in front of me.  Half mile into the race, I was in 9th place.  By end of mile one, I had moved into 6th place, having passed a suspected fellow M40-49 age grouper.  I was already starting to suck wind.  My Garmin HRM sensor is fried (need to send it back) and I wish I knew what I was pushing.   Meh, only 12-13 more minutes of running.  Suck it up.

Mile 2:  6:31.  Coming up on a high school kid and he wasn't having any of that.  I pulled up beside him and he pulled away.  I caught him again and he surged again.  We hit the "big hill" at mile 1.5 and he faded.  Sorry, kid.  Garmin check at mile 1.5 and I was holding a 6:04 pace.  The hill slowed me big time though and it hurt.  Not a particularly big hill by normal standards (60' over a quarter mile) but feels like a damn mountain at 5K effort.  I came down the other side and picked up the pace.  By the end of mile two, I was in 5K pain hell.

Mile 3:  6:31.  A couple of turns allowed me to peek back at the fellow age grouper I had passed.  He was close so I had to keep pushing.  I knew of the four people in front of me, two were kids so I had a shot at AG placement.  I also knew I had to keep the pace under 6:40 to come in under 20 minutes, and with this last mile being on an incline and my legs being dead, I knew it was going to be very close.

Last .10:  6:05 pace.  I first saw the clock when it read 19:30.  Sumbitch...I had to kick hard.  Tick, tick, tick....someone was yelling "Goooooo!  Sub 20!" and that helped.  I hit the timing mat at 19:57.  HOORAY!!

Official time was 19:57.

21 second PR

5/201 OA

2/21 AG

Heh...no AG win.  Well that guy that I thought was in my AG indeed was, so he finished 6th OA with a 20:08 and 3rd in our  AG.    Fast old farts.

I didn't realize how happy it'd make me to finally break 20 minutes.  I am all kinds of excited about it.    I know I can do better than this too on an easier course and fresher legs.  And this RR went longer than I expected.  Sorry about that.  

My major award:

Excellent job. I had a pretty high confidence that you would do it, since it has been enough time since your marathon for your body to recover sufficiently to be able to put the hammer down for 20 minutes and make the best of the huge level of fitness you built up.

How cool to be able to line up at the front & actually race head to head with the other race leaders. I almost felt like I was reading a Jay report. Definitely a benefit of smaller local races. (Thought I had that going with my 10k last weekend, until mile 5 when we converged with a crowd of slower 5k finishers.) Sub-20 to me is one of the great running milestones. I would love to get there at some point (although I have only ever raced two 5k's and one was in a blizzard).

Looking forward to seeing sub-19!

Nice RR Boon!

Now, think of that on a flatter course with fresher legs.  Sub 19 buddy!

Nice RR Boon!

 

Now, think of that on a flatter course with fresher legs.  Sub 19 buddy!

Exactly. Great stuff, Baboon.

Congrats!  This is awesome!

 Didn't want to jinx you this morning by telling you that you were gonna hit sub20, but I knew it.

FTR, I told him this morning before the race & it didn't jinx him. He thrives on the pressure!

You da man, Phil! Congratulations!

Holy shit, and congrats!!