Goal C: To finish the 5K on Pi Day, 3-14-15 before 9:26:53 am
Goal B: To run a 5K with negative splits
Goal A: To break my 5K PR of 25:06
3.14159265359...
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| I picked up the bib and shirt a couple of days ago. It was a 4-mile round-trip easy run from the Emory campus to Fleet Feet in downtown Decatur. Two years ago I would never have considered "running" into Decatur for a quick errand. |
The Tour deCatur has typically been held on a Saturday morning in mid-March, so it was a happy coincidence that the usual day happened to be on Pi Day. The Tour deCatur is a fundraiser and big community event for the Decatur Education Foundation, and the Decatur School District is well represented with student runners and their families from every school in the district. I ran this race last year, and had a good time, even though I registered on the morning of the race. This year I registered a few weeks ahead of time, which saved a lot of trouble, a few dollars, and guaranteed that I would get a Pi Day T-shirt!
It was raining on the drive to the race, so after parking I put on my running rain jacket and pinned the bib to the outside of the jacket. We would be standing around outside for about an hour before the start of our race, and I didn't want to get soaked before our race had begun. Fortunately the rain stopped within a few minutes of our arrival, and so we walked to North McDonough Avenue, in front of Decatur High School, to watch the 8:30 start of the 1-mile race. A large number of children were gathered at the start, and with the signal to start, they went racing down the street, followed by a slower progression of runners, walkers, and parents pushing strollers bringing up the rear.
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| The boy circled above was the eventual winner of the 1-mile race. |
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| Hundreds of runners and walkers on North McDonough Road |
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| The winner of the 1-mile race! |
After seeing off the last starters, we hurried to the back of the school to watch the arrival of the 1-mile finishers. In about six minutes, the lead runner appeared, blazing through the gates into the stadium and crossing the finish line at mid-field in 6 minutes, 19 seconds! As the time ticked past 10 minutes and then 12 minutes, a line began to form at the finish chute! It was probably because each child was receiving a medal and they were probably giving the awards too close to the finish line. I just hoped that there wouldn't be a similar traffic jam when I finished the 5K.
For the start of the 5K, we gathered on Commerce Street near the corner with Robin Street. We had lined up for a photo with a banner of the race, held by the front line of runners, and then the race director had us move northwards on the street, probably a hundred yards or so, to the starting chute which would record our chip starting time. (You will see later why this detail is important.) Although the official time for the start was planned for 9:00 am, we actually began around 9:04 am, so I knew that I would still be running at pi time (9:26:53). I was standing fairly close to the front, about 20 rows back, but probably closer than in last year's race.
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| The race route, with mile markings in magenta |
Today's start was just as chaotic as was last year's. Walkers in front of me, speedy sprinters coming up from behind, children darting back and forth as we started - in short, it was a cheerful mess! Actually the chaos was just what I needed to avoid going out too fast, although I definitely wanted to avoid a collision. I ran most of the first half mile with my hands open and out in front of me, so that if I collided with someone, I could catch them and myself to avoid a dangerous body-to-body collision. It wasn't until we had climbed the hill at the intersection of N. McDonough St. and Howard Ave. that the traffic cleared out a bit. I heard a half-mile alert at 4:20, which was about right for my plan to run the first mile between 8:30 and 9:00. But I must have picked up speed in the second half-mile, certainly I was feeling good, because I passed the 1-mile mark at 8:03! I felt like we might be going gently uphill (later confirmed by the elevation map) but I was moving well. After a half-mile jaunt through a residential neighborhood, we got back onto Howard Ave. for a few blocks. I was starting to feel quite warm as we headed uphill on a gentle slope to the highest elevation of the race. The temperature had risen to about 50 degrees F, and the rain jacket was becoming uncomfortable, but with the bib pinned to it, I couldn't take off the jacket. But I managed to unzip the jacket most of the way down, working my fingers behind the bib from above and then below, even while running. That helped to get some cool air against my chest and blowing around inside the jacket.
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| Decatur is just as hilly as Atlanta. |
We reached the top of the hill within 100 feet of turning northward onto Drexel Avenue. As we headed downhill, I dared to let myself go a bit faster. The IT band issue wasn't bothering me at all at this stage, and I glided quickly downhill, passing the 2-mile mark at 15:35 (7:32 for mile 2!). That more-or-less coincided with a valley in the road, but the next section was a gentle upward slope, and before I knew it, I was turning right onto Ponce de Leon, cutting a tight corner to save steps! Now I knew that it was no more than one mile to the finish line. Even though we were going slightly uphill on Ponce, I maintained decent speed, and turned a slight diagonal right through a bicycle lane onto West Trinity Place, where another gentle downhill section gave me the impetus to speed up. As we passed through an underpass for the MARTA tracks going into Decatur Square, I heard the 2-1/2-mile alert at 20 minutes even. Wow, I've never done that before. Surely I could cover 0.61 miles (ca. 1 kilometer) in less than 5 minutes, to break the 25-minute barrier. But we were now heading uphill toward the courthouse. I could feel myself slowing a bit as we ran uphill, and I could see that my heartrate was pretty high, in the mid-170's. I thought that I felt a little twinge on the side of my right knee, but nothing too bad. I could hear the announcer in the stadium, and I definitely knew that I could maintain a fast pace for a couple more minutes.
At the top of the hill, we turned right onto N. McDonough, downhill! After a couple of hundred feet, we made a right turn past the school and downhill again into the stadium and onto the field. This year I was passing a few people on the way in but occasionally was also passed by a couple of children that found the energy to put on an incredibly strong sprint to the finish. I later learned that I was moving at 9 mph in this section, pretty fast for me.
As I entered the stadium I was rewarded by the beautiful sight of 23 minutes on the clock - something that I have never seen before in a race! The time clicked forward to 24 minutes but I was exhilarated that I was going to set a new personal record!! As I crossed the line I saw 24:10 on the clock, and when the official times were posted in the afternoon, I had finished in 23:57! Smashed my old PR by more than a minute!!
Then I checked my tracker. 3.04 miles. Of course a 5K is 3.11 miles, and my tracker usually records a distance for a 5K of about 3.14 miles (no pun intended, really!), so
I had just run a 4.9 K!
If only we had started a hundred yards further back on Commerce Street!
Nevertheless, I ran today's race at an average pace of 7:53 minutes per mile, something that I've never managed before. My best previous pace on the tracker had been 8:04 minutes per mile to achieve an earlier 5K PR of 25:06. So I will take today's time as an unofficial PR, and I think that I can realistically say that I've broken through my 25-minute barrier.
Bonnie and a couple of friends from our WeightWatchers group were also running the 5K, and Bonnie got us together for a few photos after the race.
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| Montage of 4 happy and healthy "Sunday's beautiful losers" - the unofficial name of our Weight Watchers group - collectively losing at least 150 lbs. in the past few years! |
video of a Dixieland band playing near the finish line
2 comments:
It's kind of weird this happened to two different races this morning!
Also scratch my previous suggestion of starting further back in the pack -- sounded awful!
It seems to happen in the non-certified, fun or fundraiser events, where I guess it's not that important to the organizers. We ran a race at Stone Mountain in Jan 2014: the 8K was about 7.8 km, and the 5K was closer to 4 km due to incorrect placement of the turnaround point. But in Jan 2015 when we ran the same event again, both races seemed to be the full legitimate distances.
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