5K PR!

Two weeks ago I wrote about a 5K race that I did in 28:00:63. The race was actually .17 Km. too long. Which meant that my 5K time (based on total race pace) was 27:04.

Today I had another 5K race which I ran in 27:29:89. And it too was long by .12 Km. That meant my pacing for 5K would have been a 26:50 finish! I have had as a mini goal to get under 27 minutes. Next goal is 25 minutes and then I will shoot for 22.

The race was promoted very poorly. I did not know anything about it until yesterday (Friday). The poster said the events started at 7:00, but registration was at 6:30. That is somewhat normal for races longer than 5K here. Most 5Ks are done at 8:00. The idea is that the race would be over by 9:00. So the distance determines the start time.

I got there at 6:30. I stood in line with several other people. Registration was going very slowly. At 6:50 I knew I would not be up to the registration table by the 7:00 start time. Then I overheard a conversation that said the race started at 8:00. Everyone was a little befuddled at the change in time. Apparently it was planned that way the whole time, they just did not make it clear on the posters.

Well, I was easily registered before 8:00. With the change in start time it kinda messed up my “race day planning.” I drank enough water before I left the house for a 7:00 start. Waiting an hour killed my strategy on that. I was thirsty before the race started. Fortunately at the 2.5 Km. turn around there were bags of water waiting for us.

I had my eyes on one particular lady that I was going to try and beat. She stayed ahead of me the first 3.5 Km. till I finally caught her. We chatted a bit and then she picked up the pace. I could not keep up. She finished strong and I was starting to get side cramps from pushing so hard. She ended up finishing about 1 minute ahead of me. She won first place in her category. That made me at least feel good that I was running along side of a first place runner for a short time.

I took 45th place in my category which was all males that were not either students or faculty/staff of the state university. They were limiting the runners to 100 per category. I would guess there were probably about that many in my group. So, I was just ahead of the middle of the pack.

I was very pleased with the race overall. If I was not sick with a cold I might have been able to do better. But even with not being able to breath out of my nose and having to choke down nasal mucus, I did great. This just motivates me to think that I should be able to get another PR when I am feeling well.

5 thoughts on “5K PR!”

  1. Congratulations! That is wonderful… way to get a PR!

    If you run and you are a little congested and don’t want to take medicine that will dehydrate you. Use a Breath Right Strip and take a Halls.

  2. How do you know that the 5K runs were too long? If you are running with a Garmin or other GPS device, you need to know that not only can these devices be off, but they could also be correct but the extra mileage may be based on you not running exact tangents during the race. Race courses are measured using the shortest possible tangents from point to point. So, the course could be an office 5K distance, but with your constant weaving through the course, you will add mileage to the run. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t relying too much on the Garmin for exact distance. Besides that, great job and congratulations on your runs!

  3. How do you know that the 5K runs were too long?

    I used Google Earth to measure them out. I tried to get the shortest distance between all points. I know that this is not super accurate either. But, none of the races that I have done have claimed to be certified distances.

    I have run 5Ks here that were as short as 3.4 Km. and as long as 5.3 Km. I have run a 10K as short as 9.1 Km. too.

    There is a local running forum where the whole debate about actual distances is being discussed. It really does not matter to me what the real distance is as long as they would tell us. They never do. But, then, they also never claim that they are certified distances.

    The one and only race I have run that had mile/km. markings was the 10K that was just over 9. It was humorous that all the markers seemed to be pretty accurate until we got to 8. It could not have been 1/2 Km. past 7. Then 9 was obviously short too. You would have thought they would try to spread out the distance and give you 10 evenly spaced markers even if they would not be a full Km. length.

    Thanks for the congrats and welcome to the blog.

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