Lovely day for a race today; I headed up to Cranford, NJ for a 5k in a gorgeous park.  I was using this race to replace the one I was going to do on Oct. 4 which was cancelled due to potential flooding.  It was a crisp 40 degrees at the start and the leaves are at their peak right now, so the atmosphere was just great.  This is a new race, first year, raising money to cure Type I diabetes - a good cause for me personally as two of my three closest friends growing up, and both of their dads, are Type I diabetic.

I decided to cover up my watch, since that worked out really well for me the last time I did a road 5k (in May; got a 39 second PR).  The number of runners was pretty sparse at the start; I'd say maybe 50-75 people.  We took off with a loop around a baseball field and out into the park.  I tried to remember how my interval workouts felt and match that pace.  I was feeling pretty fine through maybe 1.5 miles (don't know, watch was covered up) before getting a side stitch.  Unusual to get one in a 5k; usually those lie in wait and strike me at the 8k/5 mile races instead.  I took two 10 second walk breaks to try to get it to chill, but no luck.  So I kept running but I could tell I was slowing down a little.

There was a water stop around maybe mile 2.25-ish.  I didn't take any water but as I ran by one of the ladies there said "Is she the first girl?" and the other said "yeah, I think she is".  Huh.  Ok, Jessie, don't screw this up now!!  I was hurting and I knew I'd slowed down some, but I told myself to just keep it steady.  The most recent girl I had passed had been quite some time ago so I thought my lead was pretty safe, but still.  Came around to the last bit of the race and tried to kick.  Since there was a turn just barely before the finish, I couldn't see the clock until I was literally right there.  23:4x.  *sad trombone*

I'm really dismayed by this time; I thought I was on the cusp of breaking 22 minutes.  Twice in the past 6 weeks I've run 5 x (1k @ 6:58 pace, 600 easy).  That workout has usually been a reliable indicator that I can run a 5k at or very near the particular interval pace.  And I've been doing long runs (9-10 miles) and tempos (both 20 minutes solid, and in repeated 5 minute intervals) consistently the past 3 months.  And incorporating M pace workouts to help my endurance.  And I was training for the mile in August so had mile pace work then (and got a hefty mile PR in September).  So I don't know what, if anything, was missing from my preparation; I feel like I was ticking all the boxes for a good fall 5k.

I do have a guess at one possible reason why I ran so much slower than predicted:  I was totally dead tired the past ~36 hours leading up the race.  I spent most of the week in the Pacific time zone, then took a redeye to the east coast Thursday night, which involved zero sleep (too turbulent; thanks for the storms Kansas/Missouri/Illinois :P  ).  Landed at 6:30am Eastern, and three trains and a taxi later, finally actually got home at like 11am Friday, crashed for 4 hours, got up to do work, and got 5 hours of sleep last night.  I am not one of those people that works well without sleep.  So all day Friday and this morning, the jetlag + lack of sleep made my brain total mush.  As in, it was taking me overly long to process things I was reading.  As in, I was afraid of falling asleep behind the wheel when I drove to the race, and back, today.  As in, I had to pick up my husband from work after the race (he works in retail), but he wasn't done yet when I got there, so I literally stretched across the front seats of the car, sweaty 5k clothes and all, and slept for a solid hour while he finished.  So yes, I was TIRED!  Maybe this partially accounted for my pace.

On the plus side, I wound up as second overall female (first was far far ahead of me; guess those water stop ladies had forgotten by the time I came along!).  I got a medal.  That's cool but there really wasn't a lot of competition.  With the small field, a ton of people got AG awards, and some of them were very happily surprised to get them, so that was fun to watch.  One guy literally ran back to his wife and kids saying "I GOT A MEDAL!!!!" and they were all cheering.

So a crappy race in the absolute sense but a good one in the relative sense I suppose.

So a crappy race in the absolute sense but a good one in the relative sense I suppose.

I hate those, it's like getting a slice of pie with a soggy crust.

Racing by effort is extremely difficult. I've done it many times but have yet to master it. Often times, the pace tracker on the Garmin website shows I go out way too fast, despite my sincerest efforts to try not to.

In my best races, I didn't clock watch but checked in once or twice along each mile to make sure I wasn't doing something foolish. Maybe that is something you can try. Or, keep it as it is but try to be as fresh as possible for the race.

In any event, nice job on being 2nd chick. What's the swag look like for that?

I'm sorry you missed your goal, but dang, any effort sounds like too much!  That travel schedule was horrible, who could perform their best at anything after that?  Take that 2nd OA award, and chalk it up to conditions beyond your control.  At least you got to run in a beautiful park in gorgeous weather.  And see a guy really excited about his award.

Second overall is better than second AG. With all that travel and lack of sleep in the last few days, your time and experience don't surprise me, though I'll bet the side stitch accounted for most of the slowdown.

I agree with George. You still did very nicely considering the circumstances. Congratulations!

Sorry you didn't PR, but congrats on a 2nd overall finish.  That's pretty awesome, regardless of how small the race is.

Thanks for the kind words everybody!  I don't know how to quote multiple people but I did want to respond to everyone...

Halfcrazy, thank you.  It makes me curious to know what the exact physiology of tiredness is (like what is actually happening in your body when you're really tired that makes your mental and physical performance decline).

LRB, maybe there is more to running by effort than I thought.  It worked out so well for me last time that I thought I'd struck gold.  Maybe not.  Something to think about...and the medal I got was ok, nothing too special.  It just had the logo of the race on it.  All the OA and AG winners got the same one.

George, true, thanks!  This was my first time to get an overall award so that was pretty exciting.  Yeah, the stitch was weird.  I can't ever remember getting one in a 5k before.  8k and 5 miles though, every single time.

Little Blue, thank you!  You are right, there were plenty of good aspects about the day.  The travel was very tough.  I'm glad I don't have any more trips on the horizon!

Cyberic, thanks.  I hope you are right!  I've got another 5k on November 14; hopefully I'll see a better result in that one.

Lily, thanks!

PleasantRidge, thanks.  It was fun to get that award!

outoftheblue, thank you!

Oh oops, I can't believe I left those out of the writeup!  7:09, 8:00 (two 10 second walk breaks were in this mile), 7:43, and 53 seconds for last 0.12.  It's pretty unusual for my first mile to be my fastest in a 5k actually, but it clearly happened in this race.  

Yeah, I have been thinking that using my watch could be limiting, because I might back off at the sight of a very fast split when in reality it is a pace that I could hold.  But on the flip side it could help tell me when to push a little more. I will have to think about whether to use it or not in the next 5k.

That's great that you got first female!  Did you know you were going to get it during the race?

 

Do you actually cover it up or do you just not look at it. I can run without looking at mine. You learn that in training, or at least I did.

I actually cover it up with one of those floppy rubber wristbands (like the Livestrong style ones).  I just stretch it over my whole watch and the band is wide enough to cover most of my watch face.