Today I woke up with a stuffy nose. Great, right before the race. The stuffiness went away mostly during the day, but I had a bit of a runny nose and scratchy throat all day. I feel the cold coming on.
But anyway, went to the race and did the warmup. The weather was not bad, although not ideal: about 70F, no wind, cloudy, but very humid. I predicted I would run 22:30 based on my mile race a week ago, so my plan was to run ~4:29 per km. There were km markers and they were in the right places too. The course was completely flat, with very slight inclines and down slopes. Good PR course, 1.5 laps around the park, no sharp turns. I found a woman who ran 6:13 mile last week, and figured I would stay behind her as long as I could (provided I was within my target pace). It didn't quite work out that way, because she slowed after 2km, and I passed her and beat her in the race! I ran pretty even pace, and was able to speed up on last km, but it got really tough the last 1.5km. I was pushing the pace, but I was also slowing down from fatigue, so in the end the pace didn't increase that much.
Splits by kilometers:
1.03km - 4:29 (4:22 pace)
1.01km - 4:26 (4:24 pace)
1.02km - 4:30 (4:25 pace)
992m - 4:22 (4:24 pace)
1.01km - 4:23 (4:21 pace)
Total time: 22:13 for 5.06km.
I'm pretty happy with this race, I did better than expected. It's only 8 sec. slower than my best last year, and with the reduced mileage and all the skipped runs it's not a bad result. Maybe all these short races did help me a little. I'm also happy with my pacing, I didn't kill myself with an unrealistic start, and I had a decent finish. I don't think I could have gone faster today - I was hurting pretty bad the last 1.5km and just fighting to stay on pace.
Ran a good 2 mile cooldown, so got pretty good mileage for the day.
Update: got an SMS on my mobile with official results: 77th overall, 14th woman, 3rd F35-39. Age-graded 68.6% - the highest this year. | 