Monday, February 19, 2007

When to skip a race?

So today was the Presidents' Day 10k. Yesterday I had a complete relapse with my cold, snot streaming from everywhere. Felt like crap. This morning I didn't feel any better. Decidced to go to the race anyway.....

Got there about 8am. There is absolutely no-one around. Hmmm...... Waited a while and about 8:10 the organizer wanders up with a table and starts getting setup. Not a very convincing start. So I go wait with him to get my number. It's really cold, and the wind is blowing in off the bay. All bad signs. Maybe I should just skip this race. "No" I think, I'll be fine.

Get my number - it's 13. Maybe that's a sign?

Race starts 15 minutes late (another sign?) and off we go up and over a reasonably steep hill (not really expected on the "flat, fast course"). First half mile just over 7 min pace, second half just under. Going pretty quick (goal was 7:09) but feeling really quite bad. Can't breathe properly due to all the snot.

It was a 5K race and a 10K race on the same course and as we get towards the 5K turnaround I decice I'm just gonna do the short race (Wimp!). Only 6 people have turned so far. Runners 1-4 look really fast but runners 5-6 look like they are catchable so I turn at 2.5K and quickly catch the 6th place guy. About 4K in I get the 5th place guy and kick a little to make sure I drop him. Then it was open running for the final kilometer up and over the hill again.

Finished in 5th place overall (less than 100 runners), at 22:22. My watch measured it long at 3.18miles and a pace of 7:01. Official pace was 7:12 but a few people thought the course was long. So I was just about on pace for my 10K run, just a little short on the distance!

I think I made the right choice to cut it short, another 25 minutes unable to breathe properly was very unlikley to make me feel any better. Plus I got to set a new 5K PR.

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