St. Patrick's Day Road Race - 5K

When the weather was -25 a week ago, but was forecast to be nice for the weekend, I thought maybe it would be fun to celebrate spring by going out and running 5K. I didn't have any 5K's planned for the spring, and I figured I could set a PR, so I convinced John that this would be a fun idea, and we both signed up.

Going in to the race, we knew the course was long (5.7K), but they said that they would have a clock and a marker at the 5K point. We figured we would run the 5K for time, and then jog it in to the finish. There also was a 10K race, and the race information sheet said that the 10K was starting at 10am and the 5K at 10:05.

It was still a bit chilly outside (-5 or so), so we waited until almost 10 to head outside. We headed behind the people at the start line, as we assumed we had another 5 minutes to go. They started the race, but then after everyone had gone, the starter was yelling at everyone left that the start was for everyone. I sure wish they had announced that they were going to change the start sooner. We weren't the only ones caught off guard.

So we were off and running - behind the big pack of all the walkers, and without much of a warmup. There was some icy spots on the course too, so you had to be careful of your footing. I started and stopped my Garmin at the start line and the end of the 5K. They haven't posted the overall results yet, but since we did jog in from the 5K mark, I'm not really too worried about that time.

My splits were:
1K - 5:49
2K - 5:40
3K - 5:41
4K - 5:54
5K - 5:42
Total Time - 28:48

This is a PR for me, so I was happy with that. I was hoping to be able to maintain a little bit faster pace. I seem to have a much easier time with the longer races (running at lactate threshold rather than aerobic threshold).

The after race get together was fun. They have good food (irish stew and buns), and they have a draw to win your weight in beer. We didn't win any prizes, but we were talking to the race director for the Banff-Jasper relay, and he gave us each a nice long sleeve tech shirt, so that was a plus.