Monday, April 21, 2008

First Race of the Season

After training all winter its hard to know where you're at with your fitness... Nothing like an early spring race to give you a little pain and let you know if your training in paying off. We, Peace Coffee Racing, had planned a brutal hill workout on Genoa Hill for Saturday, April 12--that got canceled due to wonderful (sarcasm) weather. We moved it to Saturday, April 19, and again, the weather caused us to cancel it. We could have done it in the wet cold air, but with 85% of our team in the Twin Cities and several planning to make the trip, it may not have been the most fun for them. Instead, I decided to do a 5k race to see where I was at in terms of my running legs.

I have been doing 5k's (and the occasional 10) sporatically since fall of '99. I stepped it up a little in 2007 because I took an interest in duathlon. I am not fast, relative to 'fast' runners, but I am not the too slow. My quickest 5k happened late last year with a 18:48 at the Stride For Fitness. I thought if I could get close to that or even better that time with my first 5k of 2008 I'd be on track. I showed up to do the SEMYO 5k (SE MN Youth Orchestra) in Rochester in the mist and fog and surprisingly, there were a lot of participants. Many were SEMYO members and parents, but a handful were 'runners.' As usual, then the gun went off a mass of kids sprinted out the first block. A few you knew were just messing around and having fun, but a couple of them were there to compete. After a few hundred yards the leaders started to fall into place. David Kalmes was out in front, his son(?) just behind him and myself a few yards back. At mile one the leader was probably 15 seconds up, number 2 and I were at 5:45 and 5:47. Number 2 and I held the same pace to mile 2 and hit that at exactly 12:00 while the leader was broadening his margin little by little. I moved into 2nd just over the halfway point and put about 10 yards between myself and now number 3. That lasted about 1/2 mile till he took back 2nd. I tried to move a little faster in the last 1/4 mile to take second, but just couldn't do it. The official times are not posted yet, but I think the winner crossed the line around 18:15 or so; 2nd crossed at about 18:50, while I hit the line at 19:00.

I was hoping for a sub-19, but for the first 'test' of the year I am pretty happy with it. See you at the Winter Be Gone Duathlon.

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