Notes
Well this one didn't go entirely as planned. Last week I got 2nd place with a 17:04 then I ran a 25K race on Sunday followed by a 1.5 mile race so I decided that this week I will take it easy and run an 18 minute flat, just enough to win my AG and not kill myself while doing it. I even bet my masters female runner at the starting line that I will do that. She said I'd go sub-17 but I said I would go 18 flat to which she said I'll still run 17:19 and whoever gets closer to the target gets a beer.
After Ricky's famous "It's hot" (98F) speech we took off. My rival, who I'm actually tied with for first pace in the series, was behind me at the start and a youger looking kid was in front of me. I figured as long as I keep running here I'll be good but the first quarter was 80 second flat so I knew we were way too fast for an 18 minute 5K even though my main competitor passed by me by then and I was in third place.
I felt smooth and good and by mile 1 I passed the young kid who was fading pretty bad. Came through the mile at 5:31 and I felt pretty good. I was probably 6-7 seconds behind the lead but I could tell he wasn't feeling it. He kept looking back which is always a sign of weakness. By the turnaround I gained some on him and I could tell he was getting tired, I kept even effort and I started slowly reeling him in. Just before mile 2 I was already on his heels and he started a rather weak surge to which I didn't respond but I kept my pace and I knew that he'd come back to me. I passed him before the 2 mile mark which I crossed at 5:27. I knew I was running solid and I still felt good I just didn't know if I could hold onto the pace for the finish or not.
I dug deep and as I was looking at my quarters they were dead even at 1:22, 2:44, 4:07 and I hit the 3 mile mark at 5:29. I did the math in my head and I knew that I needed a 30 second final 0.11 mile (4:40 pace) if I wanted to get my first ever sub-17 5K. I did it! Official time was 16:55 I measured 16:58 on my watch, I'll take either one.
The best part was that my family came with me tonight and they got to see me finish and win overall. It was Uno's pizza night but I held strong and skipped the pizza. I'm super stoked about the fact that I ran a total of 87 miles in the last 8 days and that included 4 races and I ran great in all of them.
Changes performed by After Import Plugin Version 3.0.4563 on 7/19/2012 22:17:57:
- tweak the cadence track (remove slope artefacts, limit to [10..200])
- tweak the heart rate track (remove slope artefacts, limit to [42..187], remove spikes)
- remove unnecessary values from cadence (876/1019), distance (2/1019), elevation (943/1019), heart rate (688/1011)
Changes performed by After Import Plugin Version 3.0.4563 on 7/19/2012 22:20:46:
- remove spurious points from the GPS track that would result in unrealistic speed values
(>22.0 mph): 7/944
(>2.0*Max(Average speed, zone VO2Max.Low))
- tweak the cadence track (remove slope artefacts, limit to [10..200])
- remove unnecessary points from GPS track (834/937)