Notes
Ran this race on a whim. I ran Philly 3 weeks ago and I've been putting in some heavy mileage in the last two weeks while dieting pretty seriously meaning I'm carb depleted so I wasn't sure if I should have been running 5K races but it was an opportunity I just couldn't resist. The race was at the local joint reserve base on the airstrip. 52F, overcast, perfectly flat course, 4 turns with radius designed for cargo jets and a total vertical drop of 20 ft between one end and and the other. Doesn't get much better than this. Awesome course! The 4mph wind straight from the north was the only thing anyone could complain about but come on now!
So I decided to run it. It was a small race and I knew that if anyone, it would be my training buddy Daniel, who would give a run for my money otherwise it was going to be a fairly easy win. But I was hoping for a PR which meant faster than 16:53 for the run. When I woke up and looked at the weather it showed pretty steady wind from the north with some decent gusts and I could feel the wind in my warm-up lap but the wind actually died down a bit by the time the race started so it was only 4mp instead of 7 mph which made it almost a non-issue. The course is a slight downhill from north to south so I knew that even splits were not going to be the name of the game even if I tried for even effort thanks to the wind and the elevation drop. My warm-up loop confirmed this as my pace dropped significantly for the second and third miles. I was right and the first mile was 5:15 which I was happy with at the time. Daniel stayed with me for the first half a mile then dropped back and it was a solo time trial all by myself until the finish.
I pushed hard on the second and third mile and finally kicked it into high gear for the finish to get a new PR by 13 seconds! I'm very pleased with how I ran and my result as well. Now my marathon time is soft compared to my 5K time once again.