On January 1st of this year,I set a pseudo 5K PR of 29:39.89. I call it a “pseudo PR” because my actual 5K PR, as you can see over on the right, was a 29:16 in 2006. The thing is, though, that I was 40 pounds lighter in 2006 when I set that PR. According to a table I saw in an issue of Runner’s World, that 40 pounds cost me over four minutes of time at the 5K distance. Oops, I’m getting off track…
On January 1st of this year, I had barely begun an official swimbikerun training plan. I had been running regularly for less than two weeks at that point.
Today, February 13th, six weeks later, I’m running 3 or 4 days a week for longer distances than I ever thought I could. Sure, I’m slow, but I’m getting the mileage in with consistency. Plus, I’m losing weight. I’m 13 pounds lighter today than I was on January 1st. From that same Runner’s World table, that alone would net me over one minute of time on the 5K.
What am I leading up to?
Today, I ran the Virginia is for Lovers 14K. That’s my longest distance ever: 14 kilometers, 8.699 miles, 2.8997 leagues. But, “what about the half-marathon personal best,” you might ask? With a time like 3:03, it’s obvious that there was quite a bit of walking involved. Today’s race was the first time that I ran (or, more simply, moved faster than a walk) farther than about 5 miles. That was accomplishment number one.
Accomplishment number two was running that distance within the goal time I had set for myself: 1:30:00. That equates to a pace of about 10:20.7/mile. I beat my goal time by about 1 minute and 17 seconds running the 14 kilometers in 1:28:43. I am very happy with that result.
The race was held at and around the Virginia Beach Amphitheater and Virginia Beach Sportsplex. Aside from the Amphitheater grounds itself, the course was fairly flat, which was nice. The problem was that in the last 0.699 miles, the organizers decided to take the race up over the hill in the Amphitheater and after over 8 miles of running, that was just a mean thing to do! They should have started the race with that hill… it would have been the nice, sportsmanlike thing to do.
The only other issue I had, aside from that hill, was the cold, windy weather. I think that the organizers should not have ordered the extra snow for this weekend. We had already seen too much the previous two weekends, today’s extra snow was just spiteful. I mean, really, with the wind blowing into our faces from miles 6.5 to 7.5 bringing the snow with it, that was just uncalled for.
Overall, I had a great time and am very excited about my results. I am even more excited for my next 5K in about a month. I’m looking forward to see what kind of improvements I’ve made at that distance. I ran the first 5K of today’s race slightly faster than my race pace at the January 1st race. Bodes well for my next race.
View the entry for this race on my dailymile profile.
