Twilight 5k Race Report

Following my half hearted attempt on Wednesday to run sub 5 minutes for the mile, I decided it would be fun to run a 5k the following night, the Twilight 5k in Kirksville. I had no expectations as I had run 1,000 meters Wednesday morning hard plus the Wednesday evening track workout, including a 5:26 mile. Knowing I planned to race a 5k that evening, Thursday morning I did the 5:30 am run and just did the 6 mile B route at an easy 7:30 average.

Despite not expecting a fast time, there's always a chance when doing a race in Kirksville that a slower time could still win the race. I was figuring to run around 18:36 (6:00 pace) and when I saw the pack of about 6 or so high school cross country runners I knew it would take more than 6:00 pace to win.

The gun went off and true to expectations a pack of younger runners surged off to the lead. I was wearing my Garmin GPS watch along with the heart rate strap and decided to run as close to 6:00 pace as I could, maybe some of the guys ahead would slow down.

The first mile was tough as I knew I could run faster and move up from the 10th or so position I was in. But I also knew the course and knew a hill was coming up at around the midway point and things would get considerably tougher to keep my 6:00 pace. So I let the gap continue to increase and ran the first mile in exactly 6:00.

Around 1.25 miles or so into the race we made a right hand turn onto La Harpe and headed up a nice little hill. I had already passed 3 of the guys who had been ahead of me and was in 7th place. At this point I wasn't holding back, it was taking everything I had to keep my pace around 6:00 and the runners ahead were coming back slowly. I passed 5th and 6th on the hill and the 4th place runner I caught and passed shortly after turning onto Osteopathy. 3rd place was around 100 meters ahead of me, 2nd was also in sight but out of reach, 1st was probably a quarter mile down the road on his way to the win.

Eventually I managed to pull even with 3rd but had spent too much energy to catch him and he gradually pulled back away from me to finish 10 seconds ahead. I finished with a time of 18:01, but the course was definitely short, my watch showed 2.98 miles. Mile splits were 6:00, 6:03, and 5:59 (but since that wasn't a full final mile, my pace was actually 6:07) with an average pace of 6:03.

At some point in the last mile, my heart rate reached 193; the race average was 181. A final place of 4th overall, but more importantly I felt like I had run a smart race and probably as fast as was possible given my training. For the final mile, my average heart rate was 190, probably not going to be able to get much more out of it than that! Now I will do some targeted training to increase my efficiency, raise my VO2 max, and raise my anaerobic threshold, sub 5 is going down!