Dead Legs and Rundown

I ran my first race in almost a year on Sunday, and the results were what I was hoping for. I have been feeling rundown the past week and before the 5K was no different. The pre-race warmup was tiring and my legs were feeling dead so it was not the most auspicious start and boost to the confidence.

The course is pretty straight with three 90 degree left hands turns in total. The first mile plus goes gently downhill before the course deceptively climbs slightly uphill towards the finish. As you can see in the graph, it's not a huge amount of elevation increase, but us old runners need all the excuses we can get.

I ran with my Garmin Forerunner 205 and it definitely came in handy during the race and after. I was able to check my current lap pace as well as the distance so I always knew how much pain was left to go.

The race itself went as well as could be expected given the circumstances. I went out at the pace I thought I was in shape for even though I wasn't feeling well. My first mile was around 5:35 and then it began to creep upward as the course slightly inclined. I hit mile 2 at 11:25 (5:50 mile) and was just trying to hold on by then. I struggled home with a 6:01 third mile and finished at 18:01 for 5K.

I had nothing left over the last mile and didn't challenge the several folks who passed me towards the end. That was most disappointing, but then again I've never been a strength runner/racer.

Here are the full results of the Devil Mountain Run 5K. There wasn't much depth in the field up front so I ended up 10th overall and 3rd masters. For that I got a medal and 4 PowerBars. Woohoo!

Using the 205 was great and it measured the course at 3.1 miles. SportTracks crunched the waypoints and came up with 3.11 miles so accuracy was excellent.

So although the race didn't go as planned and I know I'm in faster shape, the technology performed admirably. Now I need to take it easier the next few days so I can get over whatever ails me. I aiming to run some track races in June and July so once I recover I'll probably start incorporating some speedier, shorter stuff into the training regimen...

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