Another PR!

Last week I reported about my half marathon time as being a personal record (PR). It was 12+ minutes faster than my previous half marathon best time. That is a significant difference over that distance.

I had planned to take it easy on running over the next two weeks because I remember how I felt after my previous half marathon runs. I really did not feel like running at all for a while. However, I have not really slowed down much this time. I have not put in a lot of miles since Saturday, but I have run a few days just for fun.

Early this week I learned that there was to be a 5K this morning. I invited a couple of friends to run it and I was going to run it with them as their first road race. They backed out on Friday and I really had no reason to run it. I was going to sit it out too. Until yesterday morning.

I started to think that maybe I would take my half marathon training and see if I could push myself for a really good 5K effort. I have never finished a race in which I felt totally used up. I knew that I could push harder than I have been. With my recent training, I might even be able to beat my PR of 26:50 set last December.

My wife and I had a rare opportunity to go out without the kids last night and we had already decided that we were going to hit up an ice cream buffet. I have never heard of such a thing, but there is a restaurant that advertises it here. After getting in and sitting down, we found out it was only Monday through Friday. We left, but we already had a back up plan floating around in our heads. There is another place that has a dessert buffet. We went for that. After consuming way too much sugar, we went and picked up our kids from a Harvest Party at some friends’ house. We stood around and talked and ate a bit more sugar in the form of candy and cookies. My stomach wasn’t feeling so well when I went to bed last night. Nor was it feeling so great this morning.

With the time change happening in Mexico this weekend, I was able to get plenty of rest and could do a casual morning routine before the 8:00 start. I got to the park in plenty of time. I am not sure what the starting temperature for the race was, but 20 minutes after we were done it was 82 degrees. I suspect it was probably 80 or so.

When we started running, there was no 1 Km marker. However there was a marker for all the rest.

To get a PR, I needed to run 5:21 per kilometer, or better. I was shooting for 5:20/Km (that is 8:35 per mile). The actual breakdown went like this.

  • 1 and 2: 10:08 (5:04 per Km?!)
  • 3: 4:39 ?!
  • 4: 5:00
  • 5: 6:21

I don’t rememeber exactly where the 3 Km marker was, but I suspect it was early. I do know that the 4 Km marker was early (according to Google Earth). So if they were both just a bit short of their actual distance then that would explain the final kilometer being so long.

Final time was 26:10 which beats my previous 5K PR by 40 seconds!

This is an average of 5:14/Km, or 8:25/mile.

2 thoughts on “Another PR!”

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