Thursday Night PR!

Yes, last night's 5K was a great run, and I did get a PR. Not only that, but it was just a fun race.

You see, last night's run was the CitiStreet Corporate 5K, and a part of that run is that teams from different companies around the First Coast would run and compete against each other. Now, those of you that know me also know that I work for a computer company, and we spend the vast majority of our days sitting at a desk, exercising nothing but our fingers. Well, I was able to get a team of nine people from my company together to run the race. Some had run before, most had not, and some were just walking to support a good cause (Girls on the Run). But the responses I heard last night and today were almost entirely positive, and a few of the folks from last night are even talking about continuing to run, and even entering upcoming races!

Now, of course I knew this would happen, but it still feels pretty good to help get other people hooked on this running thing. That way, I won't be the only nut in the office.

In any case, back to the run. It was a nice flat course, around the Jacksonville Municipal Stadium and Veterans Memorial Arena. The course was kinda strangely wrapped around on itself, but it ended up being very easy to follow, and with surprisingly few sharp turns.

During training, I'd been having a friendly competition with one of the guys in the office on our training times. He was doing mostly treadmill work, but he was also a high school triathlete, and he's in pretty good shape. I was not a triathlete (although I was a swimmer in high school), and I'm still not in pretty good shape (although I'm getting better). Along the training, we were doing rougly 10 minute miles each. Not bad, especially since I'm still trying to get my runner's legs back. In training, I had been doing mostly 5/1 run/walk intervals. But I am competitive.

So, the gun goes off, and after about 30 seconds, we get to the starting line, and he takes off like a bat out of hell! Now, there's no way I'm going to let him completely run away from me, so I pick up the pace a little, thinking that I'd catch up with him, remind him that there are, in fact, 3 miles to run after that first tenth. Unfortunately, it took a little longer than a tenth of a mile to catch him -- I finally did at about .4 miles in, and at one point, I looked at the Garmin, and saw that I was running a 7:35 pace. Now, some of the folks in the RBF can keep that pace going for 3.1 miles. I'm not one of them. So I slowed down (quite a bit), and we both ran along until about the first mile mark. Now, at this point, I'm still feeling really good, despite the fact that I have yet to take a walk break. So, I just kept running. And at some point right around there, I turned around, and my buddy was no longer with me.

Ah, the joys that training can bring...

So I just kept on running. At mile 1, the split clock read just about 9:00. My Garmin read 8:34. At mile 2, the Garmin said something just short of 18 minutes. Well, at that point, I decided that with 12 minutes to finish before my goal time (30 minutes), I might as well take a little break. I'm not sure at this point if that was really a good idea, because I only walked for about 15 seconds and I could just feel the lactic acid performing a blitzkrieg assault on my thighs. I ran again, and then took another walk break around the 2.5 mile mark, mostly because the wind was picking up.

Coming around the next corner, though, I saw a bunch of people hopping up on the sidewalk, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that... I had to stay on the road and make sure to go around the sign directing us to the right. I don't know why, it's just a pet peeve of mine to see people running around the other side of the sign. I know it's not *that* much of a difference, but it irks me. Oh, well... to each their own.

Coming up on three miles, I see the clock reading 27:00. Holy crap! I can run a tenth of a mile in a minute, and until now, my PR was 29:03 at last year's Vestcor Bridge Run. So, I put the spurs to it... as much as I could at that point, anyway, and I cross the line at:

28:20 Gun time!

Which, according to the Garmin, was 27:47.

The unfortunate part of this is that there were no timing chips, so now I have to do it all again next week at Disney. Luckily, that's a pretty flat run, too.

But for now, let's do the happy dance for me!

(Oh, and yes, I still have a couple other posts to get to... the Nike+ review will come shortly)