5K - Yearly Goals Update

I ran Julliette’s Race last Saturday, and I was looking to complete one of my goals for 2019, running a 5K in under 18 minutes. I don’t do race reports anymore, but I figured for this one I’d do a report since I’d really geared up for this race.

I wasn’t overly optimistic about being able to break 18 minutes going into the race. I’d been dealing with a sore ankle, sore calf, and sore quad, and I hadn’t run hardly at all for two weeks. Then, last Wednesday my ankle and calf started feeling better, and my quad was a little better. I did a 12 mile run on Thursday (another reason why I wasn’t overall optimistic about the race), and while the quad was a little sore, it was definitely manageable. Before the run I saw a chiropractor, and he did some pressure point thing to my quad and calf, and on Friday my quad felt the best it had in a couple weeks.

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The race itself started out pretty well. I needed to average 5:47 to break 18 minutes, and I started out running just under 5:40 per mile. 

I was running with a couple people for a while. The first was a guy who I’d beaten in the previous year (only because he was running with his dog and it stopped to poop), and he told me our pace after about a quarter of a mile. He pulled away from me around the half mile mark, and I pulled away from the guy behind me around the mile mark.

So, I was running alone, which wasn’t ideal as I sometimes get in my head too much. When I hit the second mile marker at a little slower pace than the first, I really had to battle the negative self-talk.

With a quarter mile left, I really was having a lot of self-doubt. I started to feel certain that I wasn’t going to make my goal, and began to think about slowing way down since I wasn’t going to make my goal anyway.

Feeling like giving up has happened many times, especially in 5K races, but often something happens that is hard to explain—it feels backwards from the mind of matter mantra. While my brain’s telling me to give up, my legs decide they have a little more left.

That’s was happened in Julliette’s Race. I picked up the pace, and cross the line at a decent pace—not the sprint I’ve managed at several 5Ks in the past, but still a little faster than I’d been running the last mile.

When I stopped my watch at the finish, it read 17:58—just sneaking in under 18 minutes. I didn’t get too excited—the official results weren’t yet in, and it was perfectly possible that my official time would be 18:00.

It wasn’t. I came in officially at 17:58. I’m pumped. A yearly goal, checked off the list. That makes two goals completed as I also hit my goal of raising $1310 for Team World Vision.

I’m pretty pumped about breaking 18 minutes at Julliette’s Race. When I ran 18:10 at the Eagan parkrun several weeks ago, I was certain I could hit 17:45 or faster at Julliette’s Race—a flatter course with no sharp turns or hills—but after all my little injuries and lack of running, I knew breaking 18 minutes was far from certain.

Two goals down for the year, three more to go.