Notes
St. Paddys Day 5k in Naperville- Real feel 7 degrees and sunny.
Cold weather but sunny at least- took out the race hard and my race plan was to make it an honest race from the start to try and run away from everyone else. Holmes and a rando came right with me and sat on me through the 1.5, which I was ok with because I was really just trying to make it an honest race and push the pace. Took it out in near 4:54 or faster into the wind, kept trying to increase the pace but couldn't drop them. Turned around just before ogden and tried to make another move but couldn't shake them. Around the 1.5 they came up around me and slowly proceeded to drop me. My breathing was good- race hard but not dying, but because it was so cold, I just couldn't get my legs to match. Came through the 2 near 9:48 or so and they had gapped me and it slowly grew on the 3rd mile even though I felt like I was maintaining pace well. We hit the turnaround near walgreens and started coming back and I had started to regain on them. As we climbed the incline on jefferson, I thought I might have a chance to catch them but it was hard to really change gears and I knew I wasn't going to be able to kick because at this point, my legs were locked because it was so cold. Did manage to pick it up a bit and finished overall at 15:17, so pretty solid since it was so cold. My garmin and strava always undermeasure me on every run and they had my 5k split at 15:09 so thats even more cool- means that the race was slightly long and that I ran faster than I thought.
Race thoughts: it went great! Wanted to win obviously but only lost by 8 seconds to holmes and 2 seconds to the other dude. Ran plenty fast- 15:17 for the race and 15:09 for the 5k split, given that it was 7 degrees out, thats awesome. Hopefully this race serves as a good precursor before the 10 miler next week but I feel pretty positive about it moving forward.