My first race of 2014 was the We Believe in Our Children 5k in Pensacola, Florida. It was a rousing success! Below are the gritty details.
STATS
You can view the official stats below, or for those of you who might be skeptical, here are the official documents.
- #34 of 215 men
- #7 out of 14 in my age group (35 through 39)
- 24:47.56 total time
- 7:59 per mile pace
WHAT WENT RIGHT
- I woke up at 5:30 AM and fixed oatmeal for breakfast – this was a smart move. I had plenty of fuel for the entire race.
- I was fast – for the first half-mile or so, I shook off the nerves and warmed up the engines, then blasted through the rest of the course. About 2.5 miles into it, I was feeling pretty fatigued, but kept the peddle to the floor.
- I had fun – given that I really, really dislike running in the cold, my mind and body held up well.
WHAT WENT WRONG
- It was cold, much more cold than what we, in the Florida panhandle, are accustomed to; at race time, the temperature hovered around 40º
- I lined up too far back in the finish line, behind kids and other slowish people. I didn’t know they would be so much slower than me. I’m hoping they do a better job of putting the faster people in the front next time. There were even some walkers in the first group of people.
- There weren’t any discernible mile markers on the course – though my RunKeeper kept me mostly aware of where I was – I only have the time notifications set for every 10 minutes and don’t have the distance enabled, meaning it only tells me 10 minutes (then 20) have passed, and since I didn’t wear headphones and had the volume all the way down, it wasn’t super easy to know where I was.
TAKEAWAYS
- Running is fun, even when it’s too hot, too cold, too early or too late. If you have doubts about your ability to enjoy a race, know that you inevitably will – to runners, running is always full of awesome!
- 5k’s don’t offer very good swag – I can’t complain as I scored a free entry (and the race raised money for local public schools), but It would be nice, right? In this case we got a free long-sleeve t-shirt and some snacks/drinks post-race.