Setting the mark - Boulder Spring 5 mile race report

Well - I have set my 5 mile PR and set the mark to beat in the future - 43:55 = 8:48 min mile pace.  It good enough for 1st place out of 17 in my AG (50-59) and 33rd out of 237 females. 

1st AG place award

nice little wooden plague, medal and tech shirt (too big of course)

I had 3 goals for the race:

1. negative split the race - check.  I did this by 20 seconds (whew!  that was close)
2. run on PE not on pace my garmin was spitting out - check
3. Avg around a 8:35 - 8:40 pace - fail

Race aftermath thoughts:

1. Whew - that felt like a hard course - tho i did like the little xc action @ the end
2. I feel I ran a decent race - I did make a couple of  mistakes that might have cost me getting closer to my goal pace. (lessons learned) 
3. That was a chatty race - had snippets of conversations with various people while racing
4.  For some reason I always feel weird that I place in my AG

The gory details.

Got to the Rez an hour early - applied several layers of sunscreen since it was gonna by hot and sunny.   Did a 20 minute warmup and felt really crappy holding a 10:30 pace (ruh-roh!) but then my 4x25 sec strides felt fantastic. hmm...

course elevation profile

I knew the 1st mile was "friendly" and the key was not to go out too hard.   I lined up about 1/4 way into the pack and when we set off I focused not going out too hard.

I felt really good the 1st mile and the pace felt hard but sustainable.   My breathing wasn't labored (yet) and I asked myself "can you go harder?"  The answer was 'yes' but I knew not to pick up the pace and I just kept trucking along.

The 2nd mile has a nice little hill on it and as I was cruising along this tall gentlemen on my left (he elbow was eye level to me) said "oh - you are so quiet!  I was surprised to see you there".   I said "i'm trying to conserve and not go out too hard".   A little past the 2 mile mark was an aid station and this is where I made a mistake that I think cost me a good 20/30 seconds.  :(    I grabbed the first cup handed to me and it was Gatorade (yuk)   It's been so dry I wanted water so I threw the gatorade down and grabbed water but I was so discombobulated I ended up having to stop to drink it.   In hindsight I should not even try to grab water - the race was short enough I would have easily survived without any.

At the turn around I tried to pick up the pace.  Looking back at my data I see I hit the 2.5 mile @ 22:07 - I didn't know what my time was at the time since I had tape over my garmin.   Mile 3 started to hurt - I picked up the pace and about 5 minutes later I started getting a stitch in my side so I backed off a bit.

Mile 4 clicked by and I was definitely working hard and was near a man that was moaning in pain (while running) and talking to himself.   Gosh - he was so loud and sounded in so much pain - I thought to myself "wow - i hope he makes it safely to the finish line".   It was a little distracting so I passed him and put as much distance from him as possible.   By this time my legs were feeling a little glycogen depleted.

I felt my garmin buzz to indicate I was now in the last mile.  I was pushing hard and decided to wait until the dirt turned to pavement before I really cranked it out.  They routed us on the grass and the last 1/4 mile was cross country style on bumpy grass and dirt.  I passed a couple of people here and was so GLAD to cross the finish line.

I see that I did go out a tad too hard on the 1st mile and then was fairly consistent for the remaining 4 miles.  I do think I could have gone a bit harder here and there and then stopping for water was a mistake.   I think I need to race more in order to figure out how to better pace myself.

race splits

I grabbed some water and then went on to run another 2 mile cool down, man - were my legs were stiff!   I got back and saw they had posted results and that I was 1st in my AG. It definitely feels odd but good to be on the top of the heap in my AG.  I did finish 33rd out of  237 women out there and that's pretty damn good.

My friends, Dana  owner of the Walnut Cafe (most badass of all badasses) and Lydia (another friggin' badass)get mad at me when I try to qualify my results.   Lydia added another perspective - she said "yeah - you might have wanted your time to be faster - but think of the other people in the race that were behind you and you gotta respect those people too".     So true, I also consider any woman that straps on a pair of running shoes and goes out there to throw down and put it on the line is a fucking badass.  

I stuck around for awards and ran into my Summit County friend, Mike Kane.  He ran the 10 mile race and was 2nd OVERALL male.  The dude is a rock star - he's 52 years old, was once a fighter pilot, will ski some sketchy stuff, is a mtn bike rock star and obviously a great runner. Typical Colorado dude for sure.

Oh yeah - and I'm itching to run another 5 miler.  I see the Cherry Creek Sneak has a 5mile option on April 29th...hmmm....