After racing the Jingle Bell Run 5km in December, I knew I wanted to race another 5km ASAP. The unfortunate thing about winter is that there are just not a lot of 5kms in Ohio! I guess people don’t want to be out and about in the cold & snowy weather. (Not that we’ve had all too much of it.)
So, I had the bright idea to race a college indoor meet unattached. Hopefully it would be competitive, and I knew the course would be accurate. 25 laps on a 200m track = exactly 5km.
I discovered a meet at Ohio Northern University on February 4 (that’s today!), and emailed the coach to see if I could race. Obviously, he let me, because that’s where I spent the afternoon.
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| Lined up at the start. I'm second from the right. A little sad to not be sporting the GC orange & black. |
I had my eyes on a sub-19:00 5km today. (My college PR was 19:09 back in May of 2010, almost 2 years ago!) I’ve been feeling really strong the past several weeks and was excited to see what I could do.
The race was small – only 5 girls, which was crazy to me. In order to run sub-19:00, I needed to hit 45s and 46s for my laps. We went out right at that pace, perfect! My first lap was actually my slowest of the whole race. Another girl took the lead and settled right into a just above 6:00-minute pace, and I stayed right on her shoulder. We went through the mile in 6:01, still feeling strong. Once we hit the halfway point, it got a bit uncomfortable, but it wasn’t too bad. We went through the 2-mile in 12:04, and kept on truckin’. I felt like I could pick up the pace but I was definitely scared. Finally with about 5 laps to go, I decided to pass the girl I’d been running with and see what I could do. I pushed hard and finished in 18:50! Woot woot! I’m still having trouble believing it.
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| Look! We're so fast we're blurry! |
To be honest, when I was in college, 25 laps around the indoor track seemed like pure torture. Today it wasn’t so bad. It didn’t start to really burn until the last 3-4 laps, which makes me think I could have pushed it a bit harder in the second and third miles. Now I’m itching to run another! Maybe I’ll find an outdoor 5km in March.
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| Lap #who knows?? I'm just glad they were keeping track. |
My Business Man & I have spent the night celebrating with a movie marathon and Domino’s… mmmm cheesy bread. Oh, and of course cake-ball making. What’s a Saturday night without it? ;-)
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| For Valentine's Day, shaped like hearts. I'll take some much better pics tomorrow in the daylight. :) |
Tomorrow’s plans include an 18-mile long run and church. Pretty sure that 18-miler might get cut short. I’ve never tried to run long the day after a race… any ideas or suggestions to make sure it goes well?
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