No carpool up to this race, got there on time & without stress. Saw a few folks pre-race & did a warm up of about 1 mile. Did a Red Bull & Gu packet about 15 mins prior to start. Got back to start area a bit late, and Norm Green was nice enough to agreed to hold my hat during race...didn't want to just throw it away on the ground. Wore gloves, but temp wasn't feeling too cold by start time.
Started about 10 rows deep, which turned out to be about right. Went out fast, but under control and fell into my pace after initial 2 minute effort. A steady stream of runners passed me until about the 1 mile marker(passed @ 6:43) , from there on the field seemed to hold mostly steady. I eased up further on the uphill at the 1.75 - 2.0 mile marker (passed @ 6:56 / 13:39). A small group moved past me on this climb.
The "s-turn" by the school gave me a bit of renewed energy and I focused on staying with the folks just ahead of me. Back onto the long straight away toward the finish... I was feeling the tiredness set in and couldn't respond when a few more folks passed me. 3rd mile (6:49 / 20:28) just seems to last so long here since you can see for blocks ahead of you. Made a last ditch effort to pass a guy in the final 10 yards - he seemed surprised by the late surge! Haha.
Overall it's just about exactly what I predicted, 6:48 and 21:08 gun time. About 45 seconds slower than last year. 67.1 Wava score. Hung out, stayed late thru awards (club runners did really great). Here's a cut & paste from my club recap:
Our team had good participation at the Haddonfield, NJ Adrenaline 5k yesterday. The weather was perfect for racing - Temp 40 and clear blue sky. We had 11 runners compete in what I consider to be the fastest 5k in the Mid-Atlantic region. The race didn't disapoint - several club members took home age group awards, new PR's and/or cash winnings!
There was a buzz in the crowd that several national & world class athletes were running, including participants from last year's Olympic Marathon Trials and Beijing Olympics. The women's overall winner was Erin Donohue (http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/BIO/Athlete/7/220547.shtml) who is a local athlete who represented the USA at the Beijing Olympics (Race: 1500 m) last year. Her time yesterday - 16:09 - is amazing. Plus no other women were near her so I'd assume she might go faster if she had wanted to.
The men's overall winner was a Thomas Slowsky - somebody must've dared him to run under that name or else it's a classicly ironic runner's name! Time 14:47, and there was a total of 8 runner's under 15 minutes. Yikes, how do they do that?
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great job! you have a super speedy 5k pr if it's even faster than 21:08! i'm jealous.
ReplyDelete(somewhere along the way are some technical difficulties, as some old march posts just now showed up in my google reader along with the april ones? just wanted to let you know?)