Saturday's 5K went even better than expected. While training, I had run one mile at less than a 10 minute pace, but I'd never averaged better than 10:00/mile over the course of 3 miles. That's right, I averaged faster than 10:00/mile over the course of a 5K. 9:55/mile to be exact, finishing in 30:29 by my watch. I really didn't know I could run it that fast. I went in planning on an 11:00 first mile, 10:45 second mile, and then to pick up the pace and run as fast as I thought I could and still finish for the final 1.1 miles. I figured that would be somewhere in the 9:30-10:00 range for a total time of around 32 minutes.... but I feel awesome about 30:29.
My actual times were:
Mile 1 - 10:04
Mile 2 - 10:24
Mile 3 - 9:24 (my fastest mile ever)
Final 1/10 of a mile - I did it in 35 seconds for an average pace of 8:05.
In retrospect, I would have preferred to have swapped mile 1 and mile 2. I started out too fast and started feeling tired during mile 2 and dropped my pace to slower than 12:00/mile for a few seconds to catch my breath and let my heart rate settle. It worked and by the time I started mile 3 I was back to about a 10 minute/mile pace. I tried to stay steady at this pace until the last half mile. This is what I had been waiting for. I just hoped I had reserved enough energy to push through to the finish line. I accelerated up to 8:00/mile when I saw that I was a half mile from the finish line and settled into a comfortably fast run of about 8:45-9:00/mile. I had been watching my total time and thought at this point that I might be able to slip right at or just under 30 minutes. As I ran down the stretch towards the finish line, the timer came into view and I saw it tick over from 29:59 to 30:00. I pushed out the last few hundred yards as hard as I could, crossed the finish line and grabbed a water before tracking back to meet up with Lauren and run the last bit again with her, cheering her on to the finish line. I was proud of her and smiled as I watch her cross the line and make her way to the water table.
I have a lot of work to do if I want to be best in my age group. I'm enjoying competing with myself, but I think I would like to have a 1st in AG finish. The top finisher in my age group did it in somewhere around 22 minutes. I don't remember his exact time, but I made a mental note that I would need to work my speed up to 7 minutes/mile. That will be quite a challenge. Knocking off 1:30 has taken about 5 months. I'm guessing each minute is going to become more and more difficult. My next goal is to finish in under 30 minutes. I'm tentatively running a 5K on 3/12. I'll be working pretty hard between now and then to improve my pace.
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