Cold Race Day

Race day was cold. Around 30°, and not a dry kind of cold, but that high humidity, dank coldness that goes through to the bone. I had considered running in shorts today, but changed my mind when I got to the race.

the race was a 5k, with the first 1.25 miles on a road, and the rest of the race on the Erie Canal towpath. Nice and flat, fast, mostly gravel with some asphalt.

I went out too fast. My first mile was in 6:00. I had been planning to run this race as a training run--finish in about 24:00, keep the pace nice and steady. Electra, who went with me to the race, told me I wouldn't be able to do it, that I would get too competitive (she's seen me race before), and she was right. My friend Andy passed me at the mile point. Last year at this same race, I beat him by about 5 seconds. This year, I didn't catch him after he passed me.

I'm not sure what my second mile was in, because mile 2 was not marked. There was a water stop on the canal towpath, but I think it was closer to 2.5k than to 2 miles. They weren't giving out too many bottles of water today. I think maybe a coffee stop might have been better.

I finished the race in 21:32, too fast. Not many people say that about their races, but I really wanted to run this as a training run, and not as a race. My average pace was under 7:00, but removing that first mile, it works out to around 8:00/mile, so it appears that the shock of seeing a 6:00 mile settled me down into the pace I wanted to run for today.

Andy finished about 45 seconds ahead of me, and there were four people in our (45-49) age group that finished in the age group. I'm not sure what my place in the race overall was, but I was eleventh in our age group.

This race would not have been a good one for a slower (9:00/mile) runner. the sheriff's car which was supposed to do traffic control for the first 1.25 miles never showed up. After waiting nearly ten minutes for the deputy to arrive, the race director decied to go ahead with the race. Course marshals did a pretty good job of keeping cars back, but they have no legal authority, and a few people ignored them. I saw one man a the race today who is a 12:00+ miler, and I'm sure that the course marshals couldn't hold the traffic back by that point.

There's another 5K race in April that runs in roughly the same area, and I'm considering runing that one. I may not, though. roughly half of the first mile is uphill, with some flat stretches. The rest of the raceis flat, like a tabletop, until about 2.5 miles, then downhill and up one more short uphill to the finish.