You Can't Always Get What You Want...

But if you try sometimes
you just might find
you miss by a second or two?

The summer of "Stones blog titles" continues with today's installment. The other day my younger son was getting ready to leave from camp and I overheard him talking to another boy. Andy was collecting his things/toys/crafts and the other boy wanted him to leave something so that he could play with it. "You can't always get what you want" was my son's reply! When I asked him about it in the car he said - you know, Dad, like that song you were singing the other day. 8 years old. Cool.

I had sort-of predicted that I'd finish in the range of 21:15 thru 21:30 but my time was 21:31 so I just missed. It started raining 15 mins before gun time; it started pouring cats & dogs 5 mins before! They delayed the start about 10 mins but there was no end in sight. So we ran in a downpour. Course: downhill .2 miles, then up over 9th street bridge, then mostly flat until a large hill at 1.5 miles. Then exactly back the same way.

I purposely went slow, controlled at start. In retrospect I could've gone faster like I typically do. My plan was to crest the bridge then settle into a steady working pace. That went fine. Mile 1 in 6:55 and feeling fine. I let up a bit as we eased into the hill...then slowed it down on the steep part. At no point did I feel that I was pushing into the 'red' zone. Then downhill to the 2 mm @ 7:09 / 14:04. I was expecting that. My conservative plan was to yield a mediocre reslut...but you can't have it both ways.

I thought I was working real hard during the 3rd mile. Set my sights on a guy with blue & white stripe shirt...caught & passed rather quickly (he must've gone out too fast?). Then there was a kid in red shirt about 10 yards in front of me. Slowly made up that ground...passed him with less than half mile left. I could hear his footsteps behind me as we turned onto 9th street for the bridge. As we crested same I saw that the next person in front of me was just rounding the next corner - a full block in front of me! I went down the hill fast, turned onto the finishing str8 (uphill couple of blocks). At this point I was just coasting with no one in front & no one right behind me. 3 mile split 6:48 / 20:52.

I felt like I had worked pretty hard, but it was that 2nd mile where I should've pushed a bit more. It's tough to measure it out evenly on the first 5k back. This is alot different than marathon running! I found some way to push the final tenth - done in 39 seconds - and the race director got a photo of me finishing. Blurry pic, but that's the way it was because I'd forgotten my hat and was taking full rain the face/glasses. Blurry race.

21:31 gives me plenty of room for improvement. Overall I finished 22 out of 295. But I'm only happy in the perspective that this is the first in a series of 5k's this summer. So the bar was set semi-low and I did what I did. Now I've got to step up the training and the race mentality. I was 6th in my 10-year age group. 6 of the top 22 finishers were men 40-49.