Sunday, January 24, 2010

Polar Bear 5k


10:00AM – 39F

5K – 22:29


Even though it was in the mind 30’s it was very windy and it felt much colder.  The kids were miserable the whole time, they don’t call it the polar bear race for noting.  It has been about 8 years since my last 5K and I was extremely nervous.  Not like the marathon and half marathon I did last year where I was worried about not finishing.  I used to be so fast and I was afraid that this would show how far I had fallen.  I made some oatmeal but couldn’t eat any of it because my stomach was in knots.

I took it kind of easy (for a 5K) because I don't know how fast I can run and didn't want to kill myself in 2 miles.  I haven’t done much speed work, last year I did 2 – 1 mile repeats at 7:17, 7:04 so that’s the only thing I had to gage my speed.  I made the mistake of wearing my sweat shirt which was too warm by the end of the first mile.  I eventually tossed it to the wife and kids near mile 2.  I pinned the bib to the sweatshirt so I ripped it off and finished with the bib in my hands. 

I ran a pretty evenly paced race averaging 7:15 per mile.  I am just going to forget about previous speediness and just be happy with this time.  Now the bar has been raised and it’s time to go work on regaining some of that speed.   I realized that it is time to lose some weight,  7:15 miles is really fast for 215 lbs I know I can run so much faster if I just lost some weight.