This race is sponsored by Catholic Charities to benefit Sarah’s House, a program to provide shelter to homeless men, women and children. It’s run on the B&A Trail just 3 miles from my home.

 

The relatively cool, dry mornings we have been experiencing ended in the last couple of days, of course. I even had to turn on our air conditioning Friday for the first time in more than 2 weeks. So, it was quite warm (70's), sunny and very humid for yesterday morning’s race......I don’t like warm, sunny and humid races. L

 

After a 1/8 mile loop through a mall parking lot to spread the field of 300-400 out a little, the course was out and back on the Trail with the last 75 yards back in the parking lot to the finish line. It was mostly flat, although there were a couple of fairly steep, but short, hills in the first and last half mile on the Trail. About half of the race covered a segment of the Trail also used for a 10k race I ran last Sunday.

 

My time of 56:11 in last week’s 10k equates to a 26:45 5k. So, I decided that would be a realistic goal for this race. Considering that this morning was about 15 degrees warmer and sunny vs cloudy compared to last week, I permitted myself some room in setting a floor goal of 27:30. I also set a ceiling goal of sub-26 just to have a ceiling goal, although I didn’t really think it was feasible.

 

My time was 26:40 for an average pace of 8:35, or 30 sec/mile faster than last week’s 10k pace. My splits were 8:44, 8:41, 8:41 and 0:44 (6:53 pace) for the last .1065 mile. I felt pretty good about them considering miles 1 and 3 had the two “tough” hills. And, how could my pace for the last .1065 mile be so much faster than that for the first 3 miles?? Two reasons. I had a strong finishing kick and most of the last .1065 mile was downhill. Even so, however, it surprised me. Last week, I thought the almost 3-min/mile difference between my 10k race pace (9:05) and that indicated my finishing kick through the last .214 mile (6:19) was all due to a misplaced 6-mile marker. However, although I know some of it had to have been, this race seems to indicate that I might have more speed than I thought I did. I might have to go to a track one day and do some 200/400 testing.

 

I ran most of the race with a stranger who I picked out of the pack. He passed me about a half mile into the race and was wearing a black M. R. Ducks t-shirt that caught my eye. Since he was running a pace that felt like it would push me just a bit without running me into the ground, I decided to pace off of him. At times, I eased passed him by a stride or two and sensed that he was pacing off of me. We alternated leading for 2 miles, then found ourselves running shoulder-to-shoulder approaching the “hills” in the last half mile. He moved ahead of me to stay as we pushed up the first hill, which demonstrated my current shortage of running strength, and finished about 10 yards ahead of me. But, I think he helped me to race a few sec/mile faster than I would have on my own.