Race Report: Smyrna Parks 5K

It has been well documented here that I hate 5Ks.

The Reasons I hate 5Ks:
1. I am lazy and oh so happy in my comfort zone.
2. I am slow.

The 5K is my least favorite distance to race. To me, the 5K is the most technical of racing. There's no time for thinking or getting into a groove. The gun goes off and you just gotta fly. I have a couple of theories of why I'm so bad at racing 5Ks.

The Reasons I suck at 5Ks:
1. The extra 15-20 pounds that I am constantly lugging around the race course.
2. I have no athletic ability whatsoever.

In my mind, you have to be FIT and naturally talented to be a good runner at the 5K distance. I am neither of those. Also, it probably helps to do targeted speedwork for that distance and I've never done that. MAYBE ONE DAY (not).

No matter, I do think it's valuable to race the damn things occasionally even if it's always a soul-crushing, ego debiliatating disaster everytime. Which is why I found myself at the start line of one on Saturday morning. Let's just add humidity of 1000% to the mix for fun, guys! CHRIST.

I got to the race a little later than I had liked (dude. Smyrna is FAR) and was scrambling to sign up, get my race number on and have time for a warm up. If there is one thing I've learned it's that I HAVE to have a good warmup for a 5K. There is no way my little midget length legs can get any kind of turnover when they are cold. So, I like to get at least a 2 mile warm up in.

Remember this selfie?

I started my warm up and immediately ran into The KoB, we ran for a little bit and then ran into our friend Jeff. So the three of us jogged around, gossiped, and engaged in the normal pre-race nervous chit-chat. By the time we stopped, I was already tired. I realized that I probably ran my warm-up a wee bit fast. I don't know what we were running, but it felt like 8:30/8:45 pace (which... uhhh.. is pretty fast to me these days). Crap. I left them to do a couple of strides on my own (hi coach! I did strides!) and then lined up for the start.

As always, the first mile felt decent. I had no idea what pace I was running, but when I came through the first mile marker at 7:20, I started thinking... Hmmm... maybe I got this. MAYBE I can actually PR. And then 2 minutes later the pain hit.

There were no photos posted of me.

So, I made this illustration. 

Drawn to scale, obvi.

Party's over! Instead of giving into that feeling of death, I tried to push harder, not wanting to give up on my pace. My second mile was 7:40. At that point, I knew a PR was not likely, but I wanted to get as close as possible.

Here's a pic of The KoB. OF COURSE his photo was posted.
AND he's all photogenic and shit. I can only assume that my
photos weren't posted because I looked like a dying, flailing idiot.

The third mile marker was wayyyyy off (uhhh yeah, I didn't run a 6:20 mile), but with my finish time, I must have come in around 7:30. My finish time was a 23:18. Not a PR, but not too shabby considering it was August AND I'm not really in shape right now.

In the end, I actually think a quicker warm-up was good for me. If I had been running on my own, I would have definitely been running a 9:30ish pace. I would have been afraid that running any faster would tire me out. But, I think running faster than that (but not TOO fast) was good to get my legs ready to race.*

Another age group award (woot!) and a good confidence boost going into some tough marathon training (I have given up at calendar math, but I assume it starts soon). 

Hold up! There IS a pic of me. Ugh.

Identity of innocent bystander blurred by me

to protect her from being associated with my

dumb ass blog.

*I realize this paragraph makes no fucking sense. What I'm trying to say is... the faster warm-up was a good idea.