He started back up as soon as he felt like he could and has lately been wondering about his progress and how he stacks up with other runners. He had talked to me about wanting to find a 5k to enter and see how he would do. I had been wanting to run a 5 or 10k this past winter but for various reasons never entered one. Lately I've been feeling better and better maintaining a fairly quick (for me) pace for longer periods and have been wondering if I could beat my 5k PR, and by how much.
The Redbud Classic has been held in OKC for almost 30 years now and is one of the larger ones around here so I told Johnny we ought to enter it. He was all for it so I signed us up last week and we headed down there yesterday afternoon with Peggy, Sarah and K.Lee.
They were predicting serious winds for Sunday, 25 to 35 with gusts to 50 mph! The wind was pretty serious all last week and it really did pick up Saturday evening, so I thought my chances at a PR were probably not real great. However the wind died down as the day went on and it actually wasn't blowing too hard by Sunday afternoon. It did get pretty warm..sunny and a temp in the mid 80s, but we've had a lot of that over the past month, so that wasn't really too much of a concern.
We parked about a mile from the Waterford where the race was to begin, and joined a huge crowd hiking along 63rd. After a pitstop at the first port-a-johns we saw Johnny and I went ahead and worked our way down to the starting area.
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| Johnny and me, looking cool before the race. |
We had to work our way thru the crowd early on in order to hit the 8:30 pace and I worried my PR was slipping away during the first two or three minutes of the event as we were closer to a 9 minute pace at that point. We finally found some room though and picked it up to a bit under 8:30. Between the half and three-quarter mile point (roughly) there was a fairly long and steep downhill stretch on 63rd. I figured this was a good opportunity to make up for any time lost at the start and let gravity pull me down the hill, hitting a 7 minute pace for much of it.
As I reached the bottom of the hill I realized I hadn't started my Garmin GPS watch at the beginning, so I wasn't going to know our distance except for any signs they had posted along the course. Turned out, the only sign I saw was at the 3k mark, so I was mostly running blind as to the distance covered and left in the race.
The course turned from 63rd onto Grand and did a loop on Grand thru a Nichols Hills neighborhood. I sped it up at this point (and I think around here is where I lost Johnny) and kept my pace around 8:00 mile for the remainder of the race. I was feeling good and not having much difficulty maintaining the pace. With probably a mile or so left I found myself behind a woman who was keeping a nice, steady pace so I settled in 15 or 20 feet behind her and just glanced at my Garmin periodically to make sure we weren't slowing down.
As we neared 63rd again, the course suddenly took a road off to the left and headed up a hill. I couldn't see a finish line, but felt we were on the last stretch. Normally, I'd probably ease up on the speed a bit going uphill to conserve energy, but since I felt we were nearing the finish, I maintained my speed, and passed the woman I had been following as she slowed down a bit. As we neared the top of the hill, the finish line came into view and I kicked it for all I was worth. I had a surprisingly strong kick left in me and broke into virtually a full sprint over the last 100 yards or so.
I crossed the finish and slowed to a walk and headed thru the finishing chute looking for the water tables. Found a cold bottle of water then worked my way back toward the finish line to watch for Johnny. About the time I started to wonder if I'd missed him I saw him come across the finish. I worked back thru the crowd and found him with Sarah, K. Lee and Peggy. We hung around the finish area for 20 minutes or so, trying to find out where the results would be posted. We finally gave up and decided we'd just have to wait until they posted them online and headed for the car.
The Redbud Classic is definitely a well run event with a lot of participation. Had a nice goody bag and the finishing area had lots of food and a live band playing. They even have finisher's medals...a bit unusual for a 5k. We all definitely enjoyed it. Johnny really liked the experience and is ready to run another one. When we got home he asked me when the next one was and I told him you can find one somewhere in the metro area almost every weekend. I said I wouldn't be running anymore until after the Memorial marathon, but then remembered they have a 5k too. So Johnny thinks he wants to run the 5k at the Memorial marathon.
The results were posted online around 5 pm yesterday and I was very happy to see I had beat my old PR of 25:54 fairly significantly with a time of 25:30! I placed 141st overall (out of over 800) and 7th in the 50-54 age group (out of 51). Johnny ended up with a time of 29:17, so he was close to hitting the time he thought he'd make and he said he was holding back some during the race since he wasn't sure of the distance left (like me) and didn't want to use everything up too soon. He feels he could definitely have shaved at least another 30 seconds or so off of his time.
Reflecting a bit, with the really strong kick I had left at the end, and as good as I felt when I finished (not nearly as gassed as at my first two 5ks) I probably could have ran a faster pace than I did. I'll have to start thinking about breaking 25 minutes for a 5k!
It took away my long run for the weekend since I didn't want to do one Saturday before trying to run a 5k the next day, but I'll get back on schedule this week. Actually this coming weekend will be my last long run before the Memorial since it's only a couple of weeks after that. I'm getting excited!
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