Earth Day 5k Race Report

Last night I raced in the Earth Day 5k. I was pacing the 1/2 marathon the next day, so racing a 5k the night before seemed like a good idea. Laura got to come along on this trip. She also did the 5k, easily wrapping up the title for cutest runner.

before the race

I was excited for this race--I've been putting in real mileage for over a month and did some solid interval workouts. My last 5k was in February, and I set a PR at 17:01. It was really cold that day, so I was expecting to break 17 minutes last night.

After a warmup I got to the start line where I got to chat with the eventually winner and fellow pacer, Gerad. I didn't think I could hang with him so I planned to hang back and hope that I could keep him within sight until the finish.

The race started and Gerad and another runner took off ahead of me.The race started up a pretty steep hill, putting the hurt on before the race really got started. After about half-a-mile I was running by myself--in no-man's land too far behind the leaders and too far ahead of everyone else.

I tried to run by feel and only checked my watch at mile markers. I went through the first mile around 5:20, but when I went through the second I was at 11:38. I thought there was no way I slowed down that much, and when I checked the distance on my Garmin it said something like 2.15. I was hoping the marker was just off and the race wasn't really going to be that long, but it was.

finish line

The race did have a ton of turns, but I was running all by myself so I'm pretty sure I cut the tangents. After the race Gerad had 3.27 on his Garmin and I had 3.26, so I'm going to go ahead and assume the course was long. Gerad also said he thought they had us running on the wrong side of the cones a couple of places. Either way, I wasn't happy with my time of 17:38, but oh well. I felt like I had too much gas in the tank at the end and that I should have been more aggressive with my pacing, especially between miles one and two. Gerad won it and the second place runner wasn't registered, so I got second by default. While Gerad, Dan (another pacer), and I were standing around at the finish, some guy came about five feet from us and threw up about a gallon of something really gross. I've got an iron stomach but after watching that dude spew all over the field turf I wasn't too hungry for dinner (until about five minutes later).

award ceremony

I do enjoy 5ks. They hurt, but they're over fast. I'm looking forward to do another one and hoping to break 17:00. I'll probably try to sneak in a little more speed work for the next one. I'd like to shoot for a fast time at the Eagan 5k Your Way, but I'll have to see how it goes since I'll be pacing Laura at the Lake Wobegon Trail Marathon the week before.

Stay tuned to a pace report for the half marathon.