Steve - 4

19:56. I have a new PR!

I got there late again as usual. Fortunately I had a little more time before this race, but not much. Ran from my parking spot to the start of the race. Maybe like 3/4 of a mile or so. Got to the registration and put my chip on securely. Announcer said the race is starting in less than 3 minutes. Just enough time for a quick bathroom trip. Made it to the start line just as they were getting ready for the national anthem. This was a smaller race so I made it right near the front. Did some high knees, butt kicks, etc for about 1 minute and 45 seconds. Still had some rather obese runners in front of me at the start of the race, but it could have been much worse. I guess some people really want to start at the front, even if they don't plan to run the whole way.When the gun went off, I had plenty of room to operate. My achilles was hurting a bit throughout the race, but I just tried ignore it and keep the same, steady stride. I wanted to open with a 6:25 or so mile and was right at 6:24. The pace felt very manageable. Exactly to plan so far. For the second mile, I made a concerted effort to move past people because if you're not passing people on the second mile, it usually means you're slowing down. I hit the turnaround at 9:25 or so, but I don't think it was the halfway point because the finish wasn't in the same spot as the start. I passed a few more runners and hit the second mile split in 6:20. Another perfect mile. Now I knew I just needed to maintain this same effort for another mile and I had a sub 20 5k(6:26 per mile pace). So you know already now that I did make it, so there's no suspense.

Well I started fading a bit in the last mile. Maybe I let down mentally a bit. Perhaps cuz I didn't run at all on Friday or Saturday. I haven't taken 2 days off from running for more than a month now. So my legs were fresh, yes, but you don't want them to be too fresh, if you know what I mean. The last mile was a lot of work, but when I glanced at my watch as it flipped to 19:00, I could see the finish line not to far off. I began surging and crossed the line at 20:03! Not to worry my friends. That was my gun time. Chip time was 19:56, as was the time on my watch. Final 1.1 miles in 7:11 (6:31 mile pace). Not too much of a dropoff, but my final 200 was probably lacking. I might have held back a little because of my achilles, but what the hell. I'm psyched to have a big PR. One final disclaimer is I wore trainers and not flats, so that's a few seconds I can easily knock off for my next race...

Non-racing related celebrity update from the festivities- One of my wife's friends who ran the race finished a few seconds ahead of Valerie Bertinelli, who is an actress of some acclaim I guess. I only recognized the name because of the weight loss commercials she is on. You can view her time here if you dare...