Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Today's Progress and First 5K


Had a decent run this morning; my base run of 5 miles.  Still a few walk breaks at the end, but mostly running.  My runs of this length are through a local park I discovered running my first 5k just a couple of weeks ago.  It is about a mile and a half from my house, and a couple of miles running along a paved path through the park along a lake makes a little over five when I’m done.  The setting is very nice.  At some point I’ll post some pics.

I reverted back to the Nike Pegasus and I missed by Kinvaras already.

My next goal will be my “long” run Friday morning; shooting for 6.5 miles as I build up my half-marathon training.

The odd thing of the day for my run: an older guy stopped his car along a busy road, rolled down his window and said “did you see that?”  I wondered what the heck he was talking about, and he said “the sun, it looks really weird coming up today.  I’ve never seen anything like it.”  I turned around and took a look.  As I said on DailyMile, it was kind of an overcast, ozone type of day, so the sun did look a little odd.  But I’m not sure I’d have stopped and pointed it out to a stranger.  I politely said “yes, kind of weird” between sucking in more oxygen, and the guy drove off.  Just struck me as strange. 

So what about my first 5k?  Well, it wasn’t really my first.  I ran one about 21, 22 years ago, but nothing since then.  And from what I recall the one I ran a long time ago was not much of a run.  I didn’t train much and it was a struggle. 

My more current one was a charity run for melanoma research called “Miles for Melanoma.”  It was a small local run, which was perfect for someone who was just getting started (like me).  I think there were about 130-150 runners or so.  There was also a walk that started 30 minutes after the run. 

It was so close to my house that I probably could have walked to it, but I had my wife drop me off (she was walking it and came back later with her friend and parents).  I showed up quite early, so I just walked a bit to stretch my legs.  Once it was time for the lineup, there really weren’t any corrals or anything.  They just advised slower runners to gravitate toward the back.  This is what I did; the very, very back.  Come to find out, maybe too far back. 

I would say I’m somewhere around a 10:30 – 11:00 minute mile right; pretty slow, but hey, I’m new!  Let’s just say that there are people who are a little slower.  Some had kids with them, some were pushing strollers, some were just enjoying a slower pace.  I don’t mind, I just had to do some passing along the away.  And I don’t mean to indicate that kids are naturally slow; several blew right past me throughout the race! 

Once I broke free things were good.  I don’t like the congestion so much.  I’m sure this will be more of an issue on some bigger races I have scheduled down the road.  It’ll just be something I’ll have to work through.

Things went quite well.  I checked my Garmin 305 at one point, and saw that I had cleared two miles.  One problem: there was no mile marker in sight for Mile 2.  It came at about 2.3 on my Garmin?  Whether it was intentional or not, I’m not sure, but when I found the mile marker for mile 3 my Garmin was right on. 

It got a little tough at the end, where a steep hill concluded the course, but I pushed through and ran the entire thing.  I can’t recall the exact time, but I came in at just over 31 minutes.  Not too shabby for a newbie.  I was not last in my age group (but close!).  It felt really good just to do it and helped develop this running bug in me a bit more.  I also liked the feeling of doing it for charity.

My father-in-law was waiting at the finish line (he was going to be a walker), and after a quick break I commenced to walk the course again with him, catching up to my wife, her friend, and my mother-in law about halfway through.  So I ran 3.1, and then walked 3.1.  It was nice to share the experience.

My advice to those thinking of signing up for a 5k: do it!  Don’t worry about anything but participating.  It was a blast.  And now I’ve signed up for a 10k, a 15k, and a half marathon down the road.  But that’s another story.

Enjoy your progress!

Travis

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