To keep up my goal to participate in all 11 of Atlanta Track Club's Grand Prix events, I registered for the Atlanta's Finest 5K. I've run the race twice previously, in 2014 and in 2017, but haven't broken 25 minutes in the mid-August temperatures. Today's race was also the USATF Masters Championship, with runners from ages 40 - 93.
After struggling through an 18-mile long run last Saturday, I had good workouts during this "recovery week", including a track workout on Tuesday evening where I nailed all of the paces, and a good Thursday morning run that went a little faster than expected. I arrived early enough to pick up my bib and get in 5 easy miles before the start of the race, running around a 10 min / mile pace. The only downside was that my shirt was already soaked with sweat, even though I had been very careful to slow down whenever my heart rate reached 160 beats per minute.
The Masters Championship runners started at 7:25 am, followed by wave A at 7:30 am. I decided to line up at the back of wave C, for runners 9:30 min / mile pace or faster, aiming to run the 5K at a steady 9 min / mile pace, around my PR half-marathon pace. That was faster than I had attempted in the last two races, but it was safe enough, I felt, as long as I maintained good form, and didn't let my heart rate get too high too early in the race. One change was that I would try to run the race without walk breaks, just to see how that worked out over 3.1 miles.
The first mile went smoothly and easily. Unfortunately Marietta Street is under construction - it looks like the top inch or two of pavement has been removed. This means that the manholes are sticking up an inch or two above the current surface, creating a potential hazard to runners, especially running in a crowded pack in the first mile. So the Atlanta Track Club stationed a dozen or more volunteers and staff to stand on top of the manholes, directing runners to either side of the hazard! Even the Executive Director, Rich Kenah, was standing on a manhole. The volunteers were encouraging and even entertaining, especially the man dancing and singing on top of the manhole near the mile 1 marker. And before I knew it, mile 1 was done in 9:02, right on pace.
I was watching my heart rate fairly carefully, and it was hovering right around 155 beats per minute, supposedly a level that I should be able to maintain indefinitely, or at least for 26.2 miles. Mile 1 was gently downhill, whereas mile 2 had a few gentle hills, with an overpass and an underpass as we approached the Georgia Tech campus. I covered mile 2 in 9:14. By this point, I was thinking it would be nice to take a walk break, but my heart rate wasn't too high. As the mile 2 marker came into view, I passed the first of the masters championship runners, a man wearing a M90 bib on his back. Although I was passing him, his form was good, and later on I learned that he finished in less than 45 minutes. I hope that I'm still breathing at that point, maybe even competing in a masters championship race if I'm really fortunate!
Midway through mile 3, the road turned uphill. I'm glad that I ran through here earlier in the morning, so that it wasn't a surprise. Now I had to work a bit harder to stay close to the 9 min / mile pace, but I was doing OK, passing people on occasion, and not being passed as far as I can remember. Finally at Ivan Allen Blvd., the road leveled out and I picked up a little more speed. Passing the mile 3 marker in 9:15 (27:31 elapsed), I turned up the speed just a bit. Here I discovered that the masters championship runners had a different lane from the regular runners, and I'm not sure where they finished. At that point I just focused on getting to the finish line, crossing in 28:22, finishing the final 0.11 mile at an 8:18 min / mile pace.
After walking for a few minutes through the park, I started running again, determined to finish the remaining 1.9 miles of the 10-mile workout. Surprisingly, I was pretty tired, and wasn't able to push myself faster than a 12 min / mile pace. A group of men were doing their cool-down run behind me. One of them talked about running mile 2 in 5:33, and then they passed me as I had slowed down going uphill - and they were wearing M60 bibs on their backs. I'll never manage a 5:33 mile!
What I learned is that I ran today's 5K a little too quickly. Or perhaps I should have taken walk breaks, in order to save enough energy to cover the last two miles of the 10-mile workout. Fortunately today was a good time to learn this, 2-1/2 months before the marathon.
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