Saturday, December 8, 2007

Jingle Bell Run 2007

Today's the Arthritis Foundation Jingle Bell Run 5K. I find out just before the race that it's a new route, which is probably good because of the every-other-day snows we've been getting. They shoveled pretty good, but there is still icy patches and snow/ice chunks all over the route.

Ken paired up with me and we took off........literally. At the one mile point, they announced 7:55! What! That's the fastest mile I've EVER run, by alot. At mile two I was starting to struggle, but they announced 16 minutes flat. Slowed a bit, but still quite fast. Ken stayed ahead of me just a bit for this two miles and was my rabbit. Unfortunately right after that point was a big hill that I tried to run up (not walk a bit). I did it, but struggled, and therefore got a bad side stitch coming down the hill. I kept going, but had to slow quite a bit to get my breathing under control. Ken kept going and even Bill passed me (he had been just about 10 seconds behind us the whole time). Finally at about 2.55 miles I started feeling better and picked the pace back up. At about 2.7 we were turning toward the school and I wondered how we were going to get another .4 in. Well, it turns out the course was short and my watch said about 2.82 at the finish line.

After gathering with the group, we decided we needed to finish the 5k, so we ran around the neighborhood a bit to finish the distance.

According to my Garmin, I ran 3.16 miles in 26:45.
For the 5k, I ran it in 26:09! I beat the 27 minute mark, even with slowing down quite a bit that last .75 mile. That's a 8:26/mile pace.

Now to keep working on it so I can maybe do the 8:30-8:45 pace for the full 10k.

No comments: