Friday, April 22, 2011

5 km race

So race day today! It was a 5km downtown for a local women's shelter. Huge turnout for a local race - almost 600 finishers. Which made the start a little...interesting. We have a corner shortly after the start, and after that I ended up having to first edge my way to the outside to run wide for a while until I got past the wall of runners I was behind. I wasn't super pleased with that, since I started near the front so I could avoid being boxed in. But after that stretch, the race went fairly well.

The weather was ok. I mean, a month ago I thought it would be warmer, considering it was the end of April, but it was around 2 C, and around -2 C with the windchill. And you could feel the wind in some areas! So that wasn't awesome for the time but...I did run a PB/PR/whatever we are calling it now of 23:47, which is 2 minutes and 51 seconds faster than I ran this course last year. So that is pretty awesome, I think. Turns out training does help, who knew? So I'm pretty stoked about that, even if the weather wasn't great. I do like running in cooler weather, but for the end of April this is a bit ridiculous. I also want to point out some of the potholes that tried to eat me. Ok, not really, but if you didn't know they were there, you could get tripped up by them, I'm sure.

One of the things I do have to work on a little is getting better and keeping a steady pace. My attention sometimes wanders during a race, and I slow down a little, but I'm pretty good at catching myself when it does happen.

Anyway, overall, a pretty good race, I feel. I'm hoping I can bring the time down a little at the next 5 km race, but we'll see! The next one I'm running is in the middle of the summer, so the humidity will be in play.

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