So after three days off, race day was finally here last Sunday. I had been working well over a month to try to improve my time and try to beat my goal of a sub-30 minute 5k. My wife and I were running a 5k race out in Lynn, MA which for those not familiar with the area is a suburb of Boston somewhat near the Airport, right along the coast.
Since it is so close to the coast, the elevation of the run was fairly low and all things considered was a fairly flat race.
Just looking at the elevation map, it looks like there is a monster hill less than a mile in, but it honestly was not too bad. Only about 50 feet climb and although it got a little steep at a point, it was pretty easy compared to the hills that I had been running. So this race, while not being a super fast speed-burner was well set up to give me a good chance at reaching my goal. After the small amount of climb in the first half, I should be in good position to book the last half of the race as long as I had anything left in the tank...
The start of the race was a little disappointing for me though, and not really my fault. There was quite a decent number of runners (about 800) in the race, but the starting line and first street were really small for that number of runners. They did not have any system of separating runners out by expected performance, so everyone pretty much crammed in to a small area, with people pushing jogging strollers and babys, dogs on leashes, walkers or whatever all together. Unless you were right in the front, you pretty much ended up being herded like sheep at the start until it thinned out some.
I am not in the above picture, I am a bit further in the back, but this is pretty much what the start looked like.
You can see here what effect that it had on my run though, for the first two minutes, my pace was close to 14:00min/mile instead of my desired 9:40 min/mile. Finally after I made it through the mass of people the first two minutes in and got into a long straight away, I was able to weave through people enough to pick up my pace, just in time for the only up-hill of any note in the race.
So my plan going in was to try to run what is called negative splits. Here is a small excerpt from a web page on what negative splits are:
Quote:
Negative splits simply mean running the second half of an interval or an entire run or race at a faster speed. Since you're running the first half at a slower pace, it seems you'd be put in the negative in terms of total time, but since you're reserving energy for a faster second half, you'll actually end up with an overall faster time. Here are some more reasons to incorporate negative splits into your workout.- Running at a slower pace in the beginning of your workout or race allows your muscles and joints to warm up thoroughly, which can help prevent injuries such as pulled muscles.
- It gradually increases how hard your heart and lungs need to work, so it's less of a shock to your system.
- Mood-boosting endorphins will naturally be flowing in the second half, so you'll have increased energy that allows you to run faster without feeling much effort.
- Running faster in the end of a race puts you at an advantage psychologically. You'll feel more confident and have a sense of strength as you pass other runners by.
- They offer quicker postrun recovery.
- When consistently doing negative splits in training runs, you'll inevitably become a faster runner.
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I had determined that I needed to run at a 9:39 min/mile pace through the entire race to meet my goal of 30:00 in the 5k. So my goal was to start off at a 9:40 pace and then try to gradually speed up over the next two miles to finish the race with a little buffer and meet my goal.
Immediately with the horrible start, that somewhat went out the window, and I had gone only .15 of a mile in the first two minutes (or a very very very bad pace). So I somewhat threw caution out the window as soon as I got a chance to try to get clear of most of the crowd, I sped up much faster than I had intended to run. I wanted to not be stuck in the crowd the entire way, but it also meant I was working much harder than I wanted to on the only up-hill segment of the race...
I ended up running once I got clear at between an 8:20 and 8:40 pace for most of the first mile, which realistically had been faster than most of my interval training had been the previous month. I somehow pulled off the first mile though in 9:33 even with the horrible start and was back on my track for the race, albeit with using much more energy than I had planned.
Once I got through the main uphill, I purposely chose to slow down a little bit and try to find a fast-comfortable pace that wasn't causing me to nearly explode and took it for the gradual up-hill that was a small incline for the next mile. I settled in around a 9:20-9:30 pace and just tried to keep it consistent.
I did pretty well at keeping the pace consistant in mile 2, a few jumps, likely as I was passing people or trying to not get stuck behind people who were slowing down and getting pinned in. I do have to admit that it felt good catching up to people and passing them as they were running out of steam, but I wasn't necessarily feeling on top of the world at this point though. I did manage to finish the second mile in 9:28, 5 seconds faster than my first mile, but more importantly I was 2 miles down and under 20 minutes still. I had a pretty good shot at meeting my goal, but I was starting to run out of gas in the tank just a little bit thanks to the crazy start....
After I finished the gradual up-hill and knew that it was mostly all down hill the rest of the way, something in my head clicked off for a minute or so and my entire body started just kind of going through the motions for a minute I think... I looked at my watch, and saw that my pace was down to 10:04 min/mile and dropping slowly. While not the end of the world, I knew that I had no room to spare that it was going to be close for my goal and I couldn't stop there... So I turned it on with the goal of finishing the third mile with my fastest split of the race...
After my momentary lapse, I pushed strong, and did manage to finish the third mile in 9:10, which was pretty much my interval pace. I was having another issue though as you can see from the red line in the graph, my heart rate was going through the roof. At the end of the 3rd mile, my heart rate was 183, easily in Anaerobic. I was pretty close to running out of steam.
With 3 miles down though in a 5k, that is a sign that the race is almost finished. Only 1/10th of a mile left, or less than a minute. I was over 28 minutes at this point, so there was no time at all to slow down. Anything that I had left in the tank was going to be spent at this point. So I pretty much turned the last 1/10th into a full on sprint (or as best I could muster at that point)...
You can see from the blue line that my sprint got me to my fastest pace of the race a 6:44min/mile, which I can not keep up for even an entire lap around a track I would guess.
The end result though was:
I finished my 5k with a time below 30:00 for the first time ever!
My watch recorded a time of 29:18, but it went into the books about 13 seconds slower only due to the difference between when the start horn went off and I started my watch.
My official time: 29:31.4
I finished 300th out of 746 runners and for males ages 30-39, I finished 52nd out of 78. All of which I will happily take!
I ended up setting a personal best for 5k obviously as well as a personal best for 2 mile distance in 18:29. I had my third best 1 mile ever in this race with a 9:11, only 10 seconds slower than my best mile that I have recorded.
I feel that I pushed myself pretty hard in the race, but proved to myself that I was capable of running a sub-30 minute 5k. I was a good 4 minutes faster than the first road 5k that I ran last November, and 15 minutes faster than the offroad 5k that I ran last September.
So what goals are next for me? I don't want to stop here happily, even though it was fast for me, plenty of people easily run much faster than I do. Perhaps go further? 5k is pretty much the entry level race, there are all kinds of further distances that people can run, and with all of the boston marathon talk around here right now I kind of have an itch to some day say that I ran it perhaps...
One thing is clear though, that while I have been working very hard on my running the past few months, I have neglected other types of exercise. I enjoy going out for a run now, but I don't enjoy doing weight exercises. Also my cross training has suffered as it has been too cold for me to have a desire to ride a bike, and I hate using my elliptical trainer as much as the treadmill.
My next goals are the following:
Move from a 4 day a week schedule of running only to 6 days a week, 5 running, 1 cross training and fitting in there 2 days of weight work a week as well. That gives me 1 off day during each week.
I plan on running a 10k race in June, and while I want to continue working on my base and thus improving my 5k time, I want to now get my 10k time under 1 hour.
I have planned a 5 mile race in May as an intermediate step between 5k (3.11 miles) and 10k (6.2 miles), and will see how I do on that.