Friday was an off day for me, Saturday was scheduled to be a tempo run. I decided to do the weekly 5k race that is hosted by a local running club that I am a member of. I went with my wife and a few friends to do the run, but I did not plan on treating it like a race. I just was going to stick to my tempo run pace through the distance. My goal pace was going to be a 9:47minute/mile pace, which would leave me right at about 30:30 for a full 5k.
One of the fun things about this club is there are a large assortment of talents when it comes to running. There are the marathoners all the way down to beginners. They do a good job of not being elitist and try to encourage newer runners as well as older runners. With the Boston Marathon scheduled for 2 days later, a large number of the marathon runners in the club were still doing this race with plans to "take it easy". Keep in mind their taking it easy pace in many cases is faster than my race pace though
Setting out at my 9:47ish pace, I ended up right in the middle of a pretty decent group of marathon runners and started chatting it up while running with one of them who pretty much just matched my pace and ran with me. It was pretty cool getting to meet him while running, and even more cool for me the fact that I was able to run sub-10 minute pace and have a conversation, something that i never could do before. We literally ran 2.5 miles of the 5k together just talking. He gave me various pointers for handling the hills better, and I asked him random questions about his experience running marathons and such. He is 50 years old and this was going to be his 5th Boston marathon. He told me that he had just started running a few years ago, before that his "long run" was from the recliner to the fridge. It is always encouraging to me to realize that people who run marathons are just ordinary people who decided to change their lives to become healthier. If they can do it, I can as well.
As running, I got to the final 3/4th of a mile home stretch in really good shape, was not tired at all and he actually pointed out the guy running about 400m or so ahead of us was struggling. he told me that I should try to catch him and see if I could finish strongly. Even though I had planned on running a tempo pace the entire time, I decided to go ahead and kick it up the final stretch and see how I could do.
I ended up finishing strong, running the last 1/2 mile at around an 8:00 pace. I did pass the "rabbit" that I was chasing, and as soon as I saw the finish line, I kicked it up another notch to the point where I finished the race with pretty much my highest heart rate that i recall seeing (189).
I didn't set a new PR for my 5k mostly due to not racing the first 4/5th of the run, but I did finish with a 29:07 5k, which was right among my best. I did also set a few other personal bests for myself:
I actually beat previous best records on 1 mile and 1/2 mile that I had done during interval training. This was a very strong run for me, perhaps one of my best yet. Plus I felt really good afterwards (once I caught my breath that is). I didn't have any aches or pains.
I found my new friend that I had met and introduced him to my wife, and we added him to the list of people that we were going to follow with the marathon tracker on Monday (where it sends updates to your cell phone when they reach certain checkpoints).
Writing a little after the fact about the marathon makes it a little more surreal I suppose. Going from a horrible tragedy to actually being worried about people you know was very disheartening. I had been talking just that weekend about my goal to try to run the Boston Marathon by the time I turned 40 (basically have 2 years to try to do it), and then to see what occurred. Happily the people that we knew all checked in unhurt on facebook and through other means, but what happened did not change my goals a single bit. I still plan on running a half-marathon later this year, and a full marathon next year with the goal of trying to get into the Boston marathon by the time I am 40.