Paige joined Cameron and me to Run The Woodlands 5K this morning. It was a fun morning since we went together. It was raining lightly but in the end that didn't bother any of us.
Official times have not been posted yet but the time called out as I crossed the line was 21:35 which matches my PR from July 4. I'll be watching for the official time to be posted later today or tomorrow.
Ironically between 1.5 and 2 miles, I essentially threw in the towel of trying to make a bid for pushing my best time. I just wasn't feeling it and the rain and the turns seemed to all be conspiring against me. I refocused my efforts on racing. That approach really didn't yield much since no one was pressing me and I really wasn't in reach of reeling anyone in. I think there was a guy tracking me and may have been looking for a battle to the finish. But I wasn't playing that game.
Entirely by accident, I experimented with a two-stage kick at the July 4 race. With the Garmin, I knew when there was exactly 1/2 mile remaining and just took off with everything I had ... for as long as I could (which wasn't all that long). But it allowed me to pass several people. When my speed dropped back down, I focused on holding my regular pace and recovering enough to kick it in with 200 - 300 meters remaining. This approach helped on July 4 so I applied it today. With half a mile left, I dropped the guy who was tracking me and didn't see him again. I got to a point where I saw 2 other runners ahead of me but that was when I was running out of gas at the end of my first burst. I wound it down to recover for the finish and tried to kick it back up to edge the guy in front of me at the end but had waited a little too long and didn't have enough gas in the tank to overtake him. I think he probably beat me by about 4 seconds. I ended up 9th overall which was nice to make it into the Top Ten. Of course, I realize this is a very small local race on a raining morning but it was nice to break into the that top tier.
I had intended to make a second loop to get some miles (scheduled for 6 today) but wasn't up to it. So I'll either go out tonight or sometime tomorrow to roll up a few miles to hit scheduled mileage.
ADDENDUM: What are the odds ...? The official times have been posted and I came in at 21:35. The exact same time as the July 4 Run Wild 5K. I go back to an earlier post about "finding another second out on the course" and having some courage to take a chance and go for it .... Frustrating that I was so close to putting up another PR and just missed it. I suppose it's promising that I didn't feel like I was running a very good race and still came in with the time that I did.
1/2 mile splits:
3:23
3:30 (6:53)
3:41
3:33 (7:14)
3:44
3:20 (7:04)
0:23
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