When you have been running and racing for as long as I have you don’t often get to celebrate a new personal record. That goes double for the distance your race most often, in my case the 5k. On October 26th 2003 I ran the Ghostly Gallop 5k in 16:06, here are a list of things I’ve done since that date.
- Lived in Poughkeepsie
- Lived in Austin
- Lived in Pittsford
- Lived in Fairport
- Got engaged
- Got married
- Had a daughter
- Had another daughter
- Got my BA
- Got my M.Ed
- Worked at a summer camp
- Worked at Dell
- Worked at Best Buy
- Worked at Pizza Hut
- Worked at BOCES
- Bought a house
- Got a cat
- lost a cat
- Got another cat
- Got another
- Lost a cat
- Got another cat
- Ran 20,000 miles (give or take a few miles)
- Ran 50+ 5k’s
In short, it has been awhile. For years I’ve been telling myself I was on the verge of not only running a new 5k PR but of finally breaking 16 minutes. So many times I was sure one or both of those things was going to happen. In the last few years I’ve run under 16:30 a dozen times but I’ve never gotten under 16:15. Staring 40 in the face, I was beginning to think 16:06 was as good as it would ever get for me.
That is until Sunday when Lisa and I ran the Fairport Foundation 5k, a small first year 5k in the village less than a mile from our house.
Going into this race I hadn’t done a speed workout in almost a month, and my most recent race was 3 weeks earlier at the Finish Strong 5k where I ran a very average 16:27. Like all the 5k’s I’ve run in the last few years I crashed and burned in the last mile of the Finish Strong after feeling great the first 8 or 9 minutes. No matter how well my training has been going I can’t seem to find that finishing gear when it counts. I decided a few weeks ago to stop wearing a watch during my training runs, and I carried that over into this race. Knowing my pace doesn’t really seem to do me any good, I just spend my mental energy during the latter half a race thinking about time instead of thinking about running. My goal for the Fairport 5k was to stay relaxed the whole way and not obsess over my time. I figured with my lack of workouts I would either be very rested or very flat.
My plan to not obsess about time was thrown off a bit by someone giving out mile splits. 5:05, which is what I usually run the first mile of a 5k and normally I feel pretty good running that pace, this race was no exception. I tried my best not to dwell on my split and just focused on keeping a quick cadence and tried to think light and fast thoughts during the long out and back stretch along the canal. The way the course setup the 1 mile and 2 mile markers were only 30 meters apart, so not only did I get my 1 mile split but I heard the 2 mile split as well- 10:20. My normal reaction to hearing my 2 mile split is “shit now I’ve got to run a 5:xx to break 16:00 minutes” but on this occasion I thought “wow, that is the easiest 10:20 I’ve ever run.”
The last mile, a minute in the lead and closing in on a PR. This is when not having a watch really paid off. For some stupid reason during the last mile of a race I’ll start looking at my watch. I say stupid, because I never race with a GPS watch so what do I expect my watch to tell me? If I look down and the watch says 14:26, who cares, it isn’t like I know exactly how much distance I have left to the finish, but for some reason I can’t stop looking and worrying about the time. On Sunday I had no such issues, I just hammered home as hard as I could.
As I turned into the park and ran the final dash across the grass to the finish I could see the clock and knew I was going to run a PR, and I thought just maybe I would break 16 minutes as well. As I hit the line the clock showed 16:01 but the official time had me at 16:03. I know what some of you may be thinking… I must be so pissed that I didn’t break 16 minutes. Well, the truth is I’m really not. After 10 years 1 week and 6 days I was thrilled to have broken through with a new 5k PR. Sub 16 might come someday, but for today I am happy to know that I still have some gas left in the tank and on the right day can still run as fast as ever.
As I mentioned earlier Lisa also ran this race. Trying to squeeze in training with her busy work/life schedule isn’t easy but she has been getting a few runs in a week fairly consistently since early summer and ran a great time on Sunday. You can see her hammering past the 3rd place woman to seal her top 3 finish.
All Photos taken by Mary White