Firecracker 5K Recap

 The day had arrived.  All week I had been thinking about this and getting nervous.  I don't know why but I was.  My thought going into it was this is going to hurt and be painful.  And I had resolved myself to that. However when the race was done...it wasn't painful and it didn't hurt.  It felt good and it made me want to run more which is quite the accomplishment.  Most races at the end I feel like shit and don't want to run anymore but since the race I've been thinking about all the running I want to do! But let me tell you about the race!

I arrived at the race about 30 minutes early and found my friend who was doing the race with me.  Going into the race it seemed like we would be evenly matched and would be able to run together so that was good.  I asked if he wanted to go and do a warm up run.  He didn't but I went ahead and did a 6-7 minute warm up. The first half of it was just jogging easily.  The second half I threw in some strides to get the legs ready for the pace we would be running at.  These felt really easy which was a sign of things to come.  After the warm up was done I grabbed a bottle of water and took a few sips of it and about 10 minutes before the race I took the two licorice chews that I had brought and ate those.

After getting a bunch of information about the event we lined up with a few minutes to go and then we were off.  I was a bit back in the pack which was good because it would keep me from going out to fast.  The start was a long straight away and I worked into my pace with my friend.  We were matched really well at this point and we made our way down the straight away and onto the bike path.  My pace, 313 watts, felt really easy and I was at times having to back myself of.  Breathing was nice and steady not labored like other people I was hearing.  At least I didn't think it was labored!  At about the one mile mark I was on my own as my friend was behind me. It was a fairly flat course until maybe a half mile to go where it went back up over a bridge.  At about two miles I decided to push it a bit to see what would happen.  This is also where things start to go up hill but I told myself if it didn't feel good we could just go back to our planned race pace of 313.  I didn't!

I passed a few people and ran happy the whole way!  I ended up finishing in 27:10 which I am so stoked about.  This was way below my A goal for the race.  I might have been able to go sub 27 if I had done better pacing at the start but I don't know and I don't really care.  While this isn't a PR I'm on fucking cloud 9 with this result.  As I mentioned above I'm thinking about all the running that I want to do and this usually never happens after a run.  I think this result was a combination of a bunch of different things: good training, weight loss, new shoes and just having a positive attitude going into it.  I can only hope that the other races I do from here on out feel so good.  I believe that if I continue to run I'll be able to get a new 5K PR without a lot of effort!  But first...we have the trail race to prepare for and crush...at least I hope to crush it! For now we begin to put together our plan for this next 8 week block!

Happy running!

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