18:54
I arrived at Darren's place downtown pretty early, so we had time to put on our bibs and casually jog down to where the start was. They had a whole camp set up in Pioneer Square. We decided to take off for a little more warm-up before returning to check in our clothes at the bag drop area and head over to the starting line. Running downtown sucks b/c you have to stop so often for lights. Darren was shooting for under 25, since he hadn't run in 2 weeks and had been drinking and smoking cigarettes all weekend. I somehow lost him on my walk up to the front of the pack, but it was close to the start time so I couldn't go look around much. I got a good spot this time and was able to get up to speed fairly quickly. I was happy to notice that on the run downhill towards the waterfront that I wasn't being outdistanced terribly quickly by the leaders. I took this as a sign that I am getting faster =). Since they were also doing a 10k and half-marathon for this event, I didn't realize that the first mile marker I saw wasn't mine until I hit my watch and it read '5:03'. Sure enough there was a sign marked 5k in big red letters a little bit after that, so I just hit my split button again. I held my ground for the first 3/4 of a mile, and then 2 or 3 people passed me one at a time. I didn't worry too much about it because I didn't feel like I was slowing down much. I briefly thought about matching pace with one of them (like the cute girl) but realized that I didn't want to risk blowing too much energy that early in the race. My right shin was bothering me somewhat for the first 2 miles; that wasn't fun. I feel like I managed my pace fairly well because when we hit the 2 mile mark I felt like I had enough left in me to put a little more bounce in my stride for the home stretch. In fact someone started to come up behind me as we took a right by the big fountain and headed away from the waterfront, so I took that as extra motivation to lengthen my stride and finish strong. I honestly can't remember much of the last half mile, all I was thinking about was trying to break Zack's PR and hold off the guy behind me. I think he might've actually passed me with a few blocks to go, but he had a ton of kick so there was no way I could go with him. The finish was kind of dumb - the official time had 1:30 on it for the half-marathoners, so I couldn't see what my official time was. Also the last block of the race turned right and went downhill, and then after the finish arch there was a bunch of people standing around (IDIOTS). So after I sprinted downhill I had to break down as fast as I could to avoid running over all of these stupid people. Whatever. I peeled to the right so I could walk up and cheer Darren to the finish line. He ended up at 21:43 with a 6:59 pace. Not bad for a guy who had been drinking the day before and went to bed at 2am, lol. We went for a very short cooldown jog before going to get our free beers. After-race festivities at his place included eggs and toast and jamming out on Rock Band.
Splits: 5:53 - 6:08 - 6:50
I came in 5th in my age group out of 40 guys, and 19th out of 748!
My computer is due to arrive Tuesday or Wednesday. YESSSS.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
congrats on breaking 19! i will most likely join you when i run my next 5k, assuming i can start logging some mileage.
ReplyDeleteDon't be disappointed with your time at all, you did great.
ReplyDeletei just noticed your 3rd mile was 6:50! you were killing those first 2 miles. you gonna try an even pace race one of these days?
ReplyDeleteOkay big issue here. My name is NOWHERE on the results page!! =(
ReplyDeletehttp://www.terrapinevents.com/RLH_LINKS.htm
My buddy Darren Foley is in there. He signed both of us up, but had to forge my address, e-mail and birthday. I didn't think that would matter but maybe it did? I mean I had a race bib and timer chip. I paid $30 and want to see my official time! Any thoughts? I hope you guys can help - maybe I should try calling the event people and giving them my bib number to see what happened?
And yeah Steve, one of these days lol. The last 1.1 was 6:50, so the last mile (partially uphill) was probably 6:20 - 6:15?
ReplyDeleteYeah looks like there's an Email address there, probably a good idea to contact them.
ReplyDeleteoh yeh forgot about that extra 1.1, so that last mile was pretty good (6:13/mile pace). Were any of the first two miles downhill?
ReplyDeleteAny yes, I do spend a good amount of the work day thinking about stuff like this.
Yeah part of the first mile was slightly downhill. I don't know if you've been to downtown PDX before, but we basically went from 6th and Taylor down towards the waterfront and took a left on Naito, went out & back and then took a right to go back uphill away from the water to finish on Broadway (which is like 9th I think).
ReplyDeleteChris I don't know why you always assume people know the streets in Portland. I never know what you're talking about when you say PDX street names and I lived ten miles from it for five years and have visited like a thousand times in the past six years.
ReplyDeleteI don't assume he knows, I was listing the street names so if he cared enough to look up PDX on google maps he would know where the course went. That's all.
ReplyDeletehaha i just might look it up tomorrow if i can cram it into my busy work schedule..
ReplyDeleteThat shows pretty good willpower, not going out too fast even when a cute girl is right in front of you.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I don't know if you realized that Zack's 18:38 wasn't his PR...he's run 18:14 a couple times before.
one more point of contention: your splits don't add up to your total race time...
ReplyDeleteSteve-
ReplyDeleteSince he hit his watch at 5:03, then again at the first and second miles, then again at the end, if his hundredths averaged 75 or more per split, they'd add those three missing seconds in.
ahh gotcha. I usually round my splits to avoid these type of misunderstandings. A few times my splits didn't add up, and I wondered if you would catch that and point it out..
ReplyDeletewe're up to 16 comments for this thread now. i feel like we should keep this going somehow.
ReplyDeleteI think my last lap might've been 6:51? But yeah I think Luke is right, because I know the other two splits are correct. And yeah I didn't mean Zack's PR I guess. More like I was hoping my new PR would beat Zack's current race time.
ReplyDeleteAlso - I emailed the racing people and apparently they had a start time for me, but no finish time so he plugged me in according to what I had on my watch. I guess that works! I think he took off a couple seconds to account for crossing the mat at the start, but I didn't hit my watch until I crossed the mat, so I'm pretty sure the 18:54 is what I actually raced - not 18:51.
http://results.racecenter.com/2009/res_h209.htm
(Is there a way to make this a link? I think I saw Steve do it once.)
yeh you have to be nerd like me and code it with html. i tried twice to write out how to do it, but its just easier to point you here
ReplyDeletenice work getting your result in there. i recently set up an account on athlinks.com They have a bunch of race results there so you can see the progression of your race times and compare with your "rivals". Kind of cool.
ReplyDelete