Four weeks ago, just a week after my 50K at Dawn to Dusk to Dawn, I ran the Immaculata Nun Run 5K. Even taking into account the effects of the longer race, it was obvious that I had lost a lot of speed over the last 18 months with the emphasis in training and racing ultra marathons. I had gotten in a couple encouraging interval workouts with my club since then, so this week I backed off the interval workout a little with the idea of running the 10K on the Fourth. Last week I had run the interval workout very hard, followed by a moderately hard medium length Saturday run almost at tempo pace. That was the main factor giving me some hesitation in racing the 10K. I still didn't feel well recovered at this week's interval workout, and even backing off, it was harder than I would normally run that close to a race of any importance. Fortunately the only goals I had for this one were to test my fitness over the longer distance and to run my age. The latter should not be a problem since it would require maintaining only a 10:56 pace. In retrospect perhaps I shouldn't have been so confident.

I worked until 10:15 pm Friday night, then grabbed a light dinner before heading to bed with the alarm set for 5:15 am. I probably had no more than 5 hours of sleep, if that. After eating my normal breakfast, which always includes two mugs of coffee, I drove to the race early since I hadn't preregistered. I was surprised that there was almost no wait for same day registration. There were only a few people ahead of me and there were at least six lines available. When I jogged by 10 minutes later the lines were 10-12 people long and eventually extended to about 20 people long. There's something to be said for showing up early.

Warming up I never felt lose and relaxed, even after a few strides. By the time I lined up for the start I was thinking why am I here. I might as well be out on a long training run. It didn't help my attitude that this is a race that perpetually starts late. Despite the registration page saying registration ends at 7:30 am for an 8:00 am start, they continue registering runners on past the scheduled starting time. It was closer to 8:10 am when the race finally started after the normal preliminary announcements and some stale jokes.

The crowd wasn't too bad once I got up to the starting line. I didn't feel like I was weaving much passing some of the slower runners, many of whom were parents running with young (pre-teen) kids. This all despite the fact that the 5K, 10K, and 15K all started together. The biggest problems with that are that you can't tell from the back (except when the runner doesn't know to pin the bib on the front) which race a person is running. That's not a big deal anyway since the races are run on a 5K loop, so once the 5K runners finish anyone left running is most likely a 10K runner. The 15K gets very few entrants and most of them are fairly fast. The other problem is that the slower 5K runners and walkers, and these are the ones often in larger groups, are just finishing the 5K when the mid-pack 10K and fastest 15K runners are trying to sprint to the finish. One group that I passed at about the 6 mile mark for me took up literally half the road, effectively two lanes, or one lane of traffic and one for parked cars if there had been any.

In any case I got away from the start with a minimum of trouble and tried to settle into pace. I didn't feel comfortable or smooth, but the pace wasn't hard either, just not relaxed. After we turned the first corner about a half mile into the race, I was amused to hear other runners talking about needing to grab water at the first water stop which we were approaching. I could understand getting water there on the second and third laps, but 800m into a 5K and the temperature is only about 70F? Even though the humidity was very high, it still wasn't needed then. The second turn shortly after that brought us onto the main street through the center of town. Somewhere around there we passed the first mile. Checking back later on my Garmin it was 9:41. I thought from previous years that all the miles were marked of painted on the pavement, but I didn't see a single one the entire race, so I missed them when I went by. At least I knew approximately where they should be so I could check my Garmin to get approximate mid-race splits.

While the first mile pace seemed erratic, I settled in for the next couple smiles, judging my pace somewhat by that of runners near me. This section is actually slightly undulating with some long, gentle slopes. someone expecting a track flat could be taken by surprise, because you definitely notice the climb because of the length, even if it is only a slightly grade. As best I could tel I was running steady and a post-race check of my Garmin showed miles 2 and 3 to be 10:11 and 10:08. I had suspected a mild slowdown and this made my average pace as I was finishing the first lap just a fraction under 10:00.

The field thinned out considerably after the first lap as over 3/4 of the runners and walkers were in the 5K. That also meant that the closest runners ahead of my were well ahead of me. I was keeping up what felt like the same effort and also closing on the runners ahead of me, so I was a little surprised when mile 4 was 10:31, an indication that I had more residual fatigue from my training than I thought. I made an effort to pick it up a little even though I was also coming up to a couple of the long up hills in the last couple miles. Runners were pretty well strung out so I wasn't passing many, but I could still see that I was creeping up on the ones ahead of me. As the distance to the finish slowly decreased it became more obvious that while closing on them, I was only going to catch up to a few more unless I could really kick it into gear and get back down to a 10:00 pace. That wasn't about to happen as the temperature was climbing close to 80F and the humidity was still very high. When I checked my splits later I did marginally pick up the pace with mile 5 in 10:27 and mile 6 in 10:24. I think I kicked in the last fraction at about 9:30 pace, i.e. not a real kick, but the only incentive was to see if I could get in under 1:04:00. I didn't want a finish line picture of my looking at my Garmin as I stopped it, so it was actually a few strides after the finish when I hit the stop button with a time of 1:04:01. When I got my unofficial results printed out, a nice touch with time, place overall and in age group, and pace all printed, the time was 1:03:59.05.

Rather than bottles of water at the finish, they handed out plastic bags of ice. That's nice for cooling off quickly, but I had to walk a 100m or so and stand in line to get a bottle of water and my choice of granola bars, soft pretzels, or bananas. I didn't realize just how hard I had run, since the time wasn't as fast as I'd hoped, until I started my cool down and could barely manage 13:00 miles. Knowing I had won my age group, I did stick around cheering the slower 10K finishers and the 15K finishers. The one thing that really detracts from this race is that the awards presentation doesn't begin until over 2 hours after the 5K race is finished. Since I ran the 10K, it wasn't quite as long, and for the 15K it isn't too bad of a wait except for the overall winners. Needless to say a lot of the winners were not present to accept their awards. Besides a medal I also received a $10.00 gift certificate to the local running store.

From here I have nothing definite planned until North Coast 24 in mid-September. Given my work schedule and the summer heat, I will not make any definite race plans, but decide on an ad hoc basis when to race. Most likely I will limit those to trail races and 5K road races.

Nice job, George.  Congrats!

Very inspiring, what'd you get for the age group win?

There are over 77,000 miles in your log. Da fuck?

I manually added yearly totals dating back to 1968.

Nice job, George!  Those double 5K loops are tough.  It's hard to keep up that hard, steady effort and stay focused when 75% of the field does the 5K and you're running alone in the second loop.  The 10K I'm doing next month is like that.

Oh, my favorite distance!  (Not.)

Congrats on the AG win!

Oh, my favorite distance!  (Not.)

If you want to run a faster 5k....

Just saying.

 Shut up. 

I am that voice in your ear telling you to hang in there just one more lap.