MRTC RRS 5K Race Report

That's a lot of letters in that title, so let me explain. The Memphis Runners Track Club Road Race Series 5K Race Report. Whew! The is such a great race series that the MRTC puts on every year. One of the goals is to help people prepare for the St Jude Marathon in December. The series consists of 10 races. 2 5K's, 2 5 milers, 2 10K's, 2 10 milers and 2 half marathons. My goal has always been to make at least one of each of the distances, but life always seems to get in the way, but I think this year is going to be my year! So on to the race report.

The course is new this summer. Totally new location, so I did not get a chance to run it or even drive it, so I really had no idea what it was like. I had talked to some other running friends that ran the 1st 5K, but hearing about a course never does it justice. It was basically a rectangle course with a few rolling hills on it.

I got to the race site early and walked around, hit the porta-potty, then jogged maybe a 1/4 mile, and I felt like crap. My legs and ankles were tight, it did not give me a strong sense of  me having a good run. So I did some run/walk back to the start line, another big time confidence builder. I usually like to hop around while in line to loosen up, so I got where I wanted to be in the starting pack, and jumped around (get up get up and get down!)

The siren went off and I hit start on my watch and tried to avoid people. I did not wear my Garmin or iPod during this race. My goal was to run a consistent pace. This race series was going to be used in mainly to help with my training for the marathon, so I really had no expectations for any type of PR.

It was very crowded. When you have over 1000 people all running 3.1 miles, there is not a lot of opportunity to run in a straight line, so I headed out to the center of the road, 1. to avoid people and 2. it was level. I was running well, feeling good about it all. I must have missed the one mile marker so I really had no idea how far I was or how things were going, but I knew it felt good. I saw people start fading back in the pack, which kinda fueled me. I finally saw the 2 mile marker and I decided to look at my watch and I saw 15:20! I knew I had something good going, so I thought I might be able to hit my PB on this race!

So I started trying to run it harder, thinking about my pace, which I should have just kept running. I finished in 24:42, good enough for 21st place in my age group (96) and 217th overall out of 1100.

I was surprised. I was just over a minute behind my personal best this year, and I wasn't even trying for it, I was just running! Running my race based on feel. I really think not having my pace accessible from my Garmin helped me on this race. Now if I can get it through my head that I am not a 9 minute miler all the time, and start believing that maybe, just maybe I am faster than I give myself credit for, then I can start making some progress. So I will not be using a GPS watch or iPod in my training (running at least, trainer rides will have the iPod or something) going forward. It really felt great just to run a race.