This morning I ran a 5k race...  the Virginia Run Turkey Trot 5k.  It was ROUGH!

First, there were over 3000 runners.  That's a LOT of people to get through.  The start was horrible... I kept getting stuck behind families running side-by-side.  I applaud the family spirit and all that, but people have to be able to get around you, especially at the starts.  I ended up getting off the road and running on the sidewalk until some space had opened up. 

It was cold...  A hair below freezing when we got there, frost on everything.  Cold, dry air putting a hurting on my throat.

My wife is inconsistent.  She's clearly in better shape than me, but she changes her pace too much and makes it difficult to stay with her.  It threw me off a bit.  My secret goal was to be able to keep up with her.  Success - we finished side by side! :)

Hills!  There were two hills that I was not expecting.  They weren't incredibly steep, but they were LONG!  They both were after the halfway point and really beat me down.  They made the finish seem a LOT further away.

We'll probably find another race to do next Thanksgiving.  It was just TOO crowded.  Neither of us liked it.

But, I did what I think was an excellent job.  I managed an unofficial time of 28:49, which works out to an average pace of 9:07 min/mile.  That's a full minute/mile faster than my last race, which was an 8k on flat ground.  Of course, the wife and I were both absolutely done by the end of it. 

The timing above was from my Forerunner.  I'll post the official times when I get them.

Still, it was a good race for us and we're glad we not only completed it, but completed it in a much better time than expected.  We were both shooting for a 10 min/mile pace. ;)

Twitter pals

On a somewhat related note, I've been following a lot of runners on Twitter recently.  I was amazed at how many ran today and how well they all did.  Congrats to all! :)

Update: Official times are in...  28:41 with a pace of 9:14 min/mile.  142nd out of 238 in my age/division.  I'm happy with that. ;)

I completed my first race yesterday... an 8 kilometer run called Run! Geek! Run!

The Good

I finished!  :) 

It gets better though... I actually ran the entire race.  8k is about 5 miles.  I started at my usual workout pace but strangely got faster throughout the entire race.  I expected to be able to run half of it, then alternate running and walking for the remainder.  Once I was out there, I just kept "not stopping".  The first mile was pretty hard, as it was cold and there wasn't much opportunity to warm up and get ready.  The second mile was when things kind of started to fall into place.  Everything after that just got harder.  I was really surprised that every time I looked at my Forerunner, it reported that I was increasing my pace.  I made a couple of conscious efforts to back off, but after the halfway point I just quick looking and ran.

Here are the "official" stats for my run...

• Out of 438 runners I placed 338th.
• My net time was 50:23.
• My pace was 10:09 minutes/mile average.
• Out of 47 first-time runners, I was 30th.
• Out of 30 male runners in my age group (35-39), I was 27th...  I saw a lot of the men in my bracket and they were mostly fitness and running freaks...  the time disparity in that group was ridiculous, so I don't feel at all bad about that. ;)

My lovely wife started with me, but left me in the dust in no time flat.  She placed 13th out of 31st in her age bracket...  I categorize her as one of those fitness freaks, so I'm not at all surprised by her ranking. ;)  Out of 438 runners total, she placed 286th with a pace of 9:36. 

My wife was nice enough to come back a few hundred yards for me and run the last bit again as an extra motivation. :)

Other interesting observations... 

There was ample water, coffee, bagels, bananas, etc at the starting area.  I don't know if this is common practice, but I hope so for future races.

The Bad

It was cold. Good weather for running, but not so good for standing around before and after the race.

My knees hurt after and during the run.  Not a joint pain, more of a muscle or tendon pain. Both knees, on the outside, just under the kneecap.  There's obviously a muscle that attaches to smthng there and it's not real happy about everything.  It's not terrible, it just aches a lot.  Unfortunately, my knee pain collaborated with most of the other bits of my body while I was sleeping and staged a coup.  Pretty much everything aches now.  Again, not major and luckily no joint or bone pain.  Just sore muscles, tendons and ligaments and such.

I had a "marker" that I used for the first four miles.  There was a girl running ahead of me with a white long sleeved shirt and black pants that I used to pace myself.  She was running a good steady pace that I wanted to maintain, so I followed her as best as I could.  I slacked off a bit at the 2 mile mark, but was back with her at about 3.5 miles.  She slowed down a bit, so I passed her and was quite proud of myself that I'd managed to outlast her.  Unfortunately, she was sandbagging.  At 4 miles, she kicked in the afterburners and there was no way I could keep up.  I was a little "crushed" by that, but struggled on regardless.  It didn't really make a difference to my running, it was just one more thing to fight through.  I was rapidly running out of steam and if it had happened earlier, I probably would have emotionally given up a bit and wouldn't have been able to maintain my pace.  I need to keep it in mind for the next race and make sure I'm using the Forerunner as a marker, not another unknown runner.

All of my wife's friends who had considered running backed out.  That means no one to take pictures. My very first race and I have no picture of me falling across the finish line. :(

Stats

These are from the Forerunner and may be a few seconds off of the "official" timing...

Next...

Take a few days off for recovery.  I'll probably start running again next weekend.  I have to go out of town Thursday and Friday, so I'll probably hit the trail on Saturday.

That brings me to my workout... I've been doing 20 minutes running on my workouts.  I obviously need to up that a bit since I just proved to myself that I can run more than twice as long.  I'll probably go to 30 next week, then take it from there and see how it goes.

Overall, I'm pretty stoked up and impressed with myself about the race. I'll probably start planning the next one soon... like tomorrow. :)