I didn’t plan to run a race this week, the third week of my fall marathon training schedule. But a mass of cooler, drier air moved over the mid-Atlantic region a couple of days ago. Forecasts for the weekend of overnight temperatures in the low 60's with low humidity caused me to think, “Why not? How often do we get such favorable running weather in July?” Besides, my training program called for a “fast, continuous run” today. In Glover’s terminology, that means a run of 3-5 miles that feels just slightly easier than 10k pace, without worrying about what the actual pace is. Some people call these runs “tempo” runs. With the nice weather, why not do a hard 5k race effort instead of a somewhat easier, but longer, training run?

 

So, I got on the internet last night, checked the websites with list local race schedules and found one....the National Kidney Foundation 5k at the Robert F. Kennedy stadium in DC.

 

True to forecast, it was reasonably cool this morning, although the temperature was into the 70's by race time, and the humidity was moderately low. I still didn’t expect much from the race, because I was finishing a 49 mile week and had run an 18 mile LSD Friday under hot, humid conditions, plus a 6 mile “easy recovery run” yesterday that didn’t feel much like a recovery! Sure enough, my legs still felt a bit heavy during my pre-race warmup.

 

The race was a small one of about 250 entrants. It was an out and back course on East Capitol Street, a limited access road, that runs past and around the stadium. The first mile was a slightly downhill. The second was a pretty good uphill to the turnaround point and then back down the hill. The third mile was the reverse of the first, a slight uphill.

 

I ran 26:02.....better than I expected. Average pace of 8:24. My splits were pretty even at 8:23, 8:34, 8:20, 0.45. The last 1/10 mile was at a 7:30 pace. That indicates a strong finishing kick, but it’s also too much faster than my other consistent splits and my average pace, which indicates that I didn’t push the race as I could have, although it certainly felt hard. I just didn’t feel like running any harder. My legs were tired. Besides, it was a training run....a substitute for a speed workout....not a target race. So it shouldn’t have been a 100% effort.

 

I was very pleased with the race, though. It was the second fastest of the six 5k’s I’ve run in my second running life, all since February of this year. It was also 30 seconds faster than my last one four weeks ago. I think it indicated that I’m making a little progress. I also think it told me that I should have no problem going under 25 minutes under fall/winter racing conditions. That's important to me because I'm going to need 23:30 5k speed to qualify for Boston.