Notes
Pretty good race, though distance is questionable (garmin said 3.05, which is 6:42 pace), good for first 35-39 maie, albiet in a very, very small field. 20th place men, women were in a different race, but I think 3 finished faster than I did.
Pre race:
no breakfast, which was fine. Ran to the start and did several short runs in the hour before the race, totaling 2.35 miles warm up. I don't normally run this long during a warmup-I usually run a mile and my legs either feel good or they don't. This warmup gave me enough time to go from feeling crappy and slow to race ready, but I came down too far from that--my HR was pretty low by the time the gun went off-115-ish.
Race:
5k is a brutal, painful awful distance: I never felt good, but at the moment that occurs in every race-HTFU or not, I did. I would have liked to have a better record of my last .5-.75 miles as I was really moving-next 5k I need to adjust my auto splits back to .5 miles. Garmin says I ran the last .05 (did not calculate 3.1) at sub 5 pace. While I don't put any faith in that number, I know I was moving. 2nd place in AG was 7 seconds back, so he was likely someone I passed in the last half mile (there were a couple). Avg HR was 170, but finished at 184.
Post Race:
Did an easy 1 mile cool down. Not too much pain several hours later, we'll see about tomorrow.
Thoughts:
I hope this was a legit 5k, as that would put me about 5 seconds faster than I'd hoped to run today. Either way, I have to be happy with the time, as it is the fastest I've run, over any distance (race, tempo, intervals) since September 2009. I don't believe I've done a single sub 7 mile, or fraction thereof, in that time frame. I could have pushed harder in the middle of the run, but I didn't know that at the time. I also think a better warmup would have lessened the shock of the speed, despite the fact that I did almost 2.5 miles.
This race will likely complicate May 1 HM race pacing, as McMillian thinks this puts me on PR pace, but I don't think I'm even close to PR form. Will have to see next month of training goes, but I probably won't be targeting a PR May 1.