Steve - 9

I knew coming into this race that I was going to run faster than I ever have over the distance of 5 kilometers. The only question I had was exactly how fast. My legs were feeling fresh after cutting my mileage the last few weeks and getting in some quality work on the track. With a 7 a.m. start time, it seemed like it would be perfect weather conditions for my epic run. And I finally was able to arrive to a race early for once. I got there around 6:15 and got in a solid mile warmup and then did a bunch of drills and dynamic stretching. As the clock ticked down to 7, I felt ready.

My plan was to start out around 6:10 mile pace, speed up on the second mile and then finish with a 6:00 or faster mile. The first mile in a race is always so important. I knew if I went out any faster than 6:10, I would crash on the third mile. When the gun went off, I let everyone else sprint out of the gate and I gradually increased my pace and started cruising by those who had started too fast. I didn't see a mile marker for mile 1, but I felt like I was running the right pace. The course is an out-and-back on a paved trail along a resevoir. There are some turns and short hills to deal with. I hit the turn-around at exactly 9:30, on pace for 19:00, pretty much exactly what I was targeting. By this point the race had thinned out a great deal. I was running with a few other people but the leaders were a few minutes ahead. As I progressed through the second half of the course, I sensed I was tiring. One of my teammates from my company, who I found out after the race is 59 years old, caught up with me. He surged ahead of me a little bit, but he got a case of the dry heaves and fell back a bit. He caught up again a few minutes later as we approached a car on the road. The path is only slightly wider than the side of a large automobile. The car was stopped, and I swung out wide to run around it, and my teammate went inside. From that point it was another .4 miles or so to the finish, and I never saw him the rest of the way. I could feel that I had been slowing down in what must have been in the third mile, so I tried to put on a surge to the finish line. When I heard we had only a quarter mile left, I picked it up another gear. I didn't have enough for a sprint to the line, but I wanted to keep increasing my speed. With only 50 meters left, I saw the time clock said 19 but couldn't see the last 2 digits. I dialed up another gear for the final seconds of agony and crossed the line. Glancing at my watch, I was quite pleased to see a time of 19:17, a PR by 39 seconds!

In the track portion of my event, I ran in a distance relay where I had to run a 3200. I ran 12:45, slower than my 5k pace. We were way behind and it was like 100 degrees, so I just cruised. At the end of the day, I ran a 400 in another relay in 62 seconds. It was fun to run fast.

I did a total of 8600 meters of races for the day and maybe 3.5 miles in warmups and cooldowns, so let's call it a total of 9 miles. Found out later that night I was to run a 10k tomorrow at 7 a.m.