Redondo Beach was abuzz with runners and running enthusiasts alike. The wife and I arrived early. No more last minute race arrival in 2010, even if it makes waking up at 5:30 am! Got in a decent warmup, despite it being like -20 degrees outside (ok maybe 50 degrees). A bunch of people were wearing costumes for the race. I thought the best ones were a girl that was "gum on a shoe" (a pink outfit and then a little miniature shoe was attached to her head) and the other was a guy dressed like Tiger Woods with a group of angry blonds with golf clubs. There were tons of fast looking people entered in the 5k, so I knew placing was out of the question. I just wanted to run a good, solid tempo pace. My feel for pace is a bit off, so once the race started I wasn't sure if I was going too fast or too slow. The first mile was all uphill (although not treacherous) and I hit the first mile at 6:39. Pretty solid pace, probably right in my tempo zone. Maybe a bit too fast considering it was uphill. Of course the second mile was also a net uphill. It took a bit more effort to push through that mile and I hit the 2nd marker in 6:59. Within my tempo range, but not a good sign that it was much slower than mile 1. By this point, I was wondering if we ever going to get to the downhill portion. Finally after about 2.5 miles, we hit the turnaround point and started on our descent. I lengthened the stride a bit, knowing the end was near. I had plenty of gas in the tank, but I wanted to keep my effort in the 85 to 90% zone. At last, I reached the end in time to look up at the clock and hear the announcer say 21:xx. Pretty slow, but I'll take hit for a mostly uphill tempo run. For those interested, I input the course as best I could on gmaps. The first two miles were pretty tough. So I'm happy with my time considering it wasn't an all-out effort and the course was uphill mostly.
21:11 (6:39, 6:59, 7:34 (6:53 pace for final 1.1))
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You left out any mention of post-race beer, which I heard they were supposed to have.
ReplyDeleteSounds fun! One thing I will never get is when you do races and say you only want to do 85 to 90%. I don't think I could do that if I tried. I always want to have my ass completely kicked at the end. It's the competitor in me =).
ReplyDeleteYes on the post beer. We actually had it at home though. So yeh not so exciting. That's why I didn't mention. We got 2 beers each, which is cool.
ReplyDeleteYeh right now its more important to me be able to continue building valuable training runs. A tempo run I can recover from quickly, while a race I need more time off and it screws up my mileage. I want to get my mileage up to 20 and then 30 in a few weeks. So yeh, its hard to hold back, but I just am focusing on having a solid base. I'm sure Luke would approve..