Notes
Blazing 5k, 15:07, 18th place
4:42.2. 4:48.4, 4:58.9
Well this didn't go as well as I was hoping. When talking with Coach Ives pre race we were thinking a PR of sub 14:45 was on the table, and my "C" goal was sub 15:00. Woke up at about 4:30am for the 8am race and walked around the house a bit to get the body moving and had my usual pre race belvitas, oatmeal, coffee, pedialyte, water. Legs felt a little meh at the house before leaving for the race
Gun went off and I quickly off the back of the pace, running 4:40-4:45 pace the 1st K I was probably in 22nd-ish place out of about 30 starters and most of the race was moving away from me. Just focused on my race plan of going out in low 4:40's and trusted that if I ran according to plan I'd move up by the end. Maintained pace pretty well through the back loop, but by the time we hit the front loop about 1.4 miles in I checked my watch and saw I had slowed down to about 4:50 pace. I passed a few guys during this time but was mostly in no mans land, not gaining much and probably losing ground on the big pack ahead of me. Hit the 2 mile split in about 4:49 and was not moving the right direction. Kept trying to pick it up but just didn't have the strength to. Ran the last mile completely in no mans land in 4:59 for a 15:07 finishing time
Pretty bummed by this result. My legs didn't feel like they were running all that fast, so that's a good sign I'm getting some speed back, but my strength was really lacking. When things got tough the last couple miles I just had nothing to go to when I wanted to pick up the effort to maintain pace. I ran 14:57 at this race last year, but it had temps in the low 40s vs temps around 70 today. So the 2 efforts might be pretty similar when adjusting for weather. I'm not thrilled with this result at all, but I'm confident that I'll be able to improve a lot over the next few months and still run some good races this fall