Saturday 010811 Quaker Oats Quicker Quaker Oatmeal Festival 5k

PW.

18:11.  30th overall, 24th male and 3rd master.

Yeah, personal worst.  It was a couple of hours after the race before it hit me, but I am pretty sure that is true.  I guess, yes, a PW is a little harder to classify then a PR – but I am fairly certain this is my slowest 5k in a road race (not counting long course, or XC, etc).

And I am not particularly surprised.  Disappointed a bit, but perhaps as equally motivated given that.  Even though I stated I was going to do 5k, 10kish training in a build up for USATF XC next month, I really did nothing of that sort after the Thanksgiving Day race.  Lots of reasons for that … or *ahem* … we can call them excuses.  Too cold.  Holidays.  Business travel.  Time off with the family.  Up skiing.  And chasing that silly 4100 number at the age of 41. 

So I got what I trained for, and got what I came for:  a good ole fashion arse kicking, and a good amount of time shared with the church of racers (which is very good for the soul for me and regrounding me).

Warmed up with Nick, Ryan, noticing the pretty damn loaded field for a local 5k in January (at least for Colorado standards).  Saw fellow FF team member Johnny T, and Bill F who was jogging it with his kid.  The rarely sighted Bob S was jogging with Jenni K.  Aaron and Nan Kennard were floating about.  Joe Grant was taking pictures.  And some US record holder was doing strides.  J.P. was on the side lines watching.   I could go on.  Just look at the results.  It was wonderful.  A regular reunion of folks wanting to suffer,

Yeah, I need to do this more often.

Oh yeah, the race … I got out too fast.  No GPS to provide me feedback as to how stupid I was running, and probably more importantly – I tend to do this when I have not done the race specific work.  That sort of work dials me in, and when I don’t do it … I tend to get out quicker than I can sustain.  I don’t have any splits, but I knew by about a kilo that I was over my head.  Mind you, that pace should not be over my head – but it was today.

Ran close to Bob for about a kilo but then he began to pull away.  Got caught by Aaron at 3k coming out of the lake.  Got caught by Ryan with about a kilo to go.  Traded places a few times with Josh Melver (who runs the Redline Racing gig that puts on the racing circuit) but he pulled away from me in the last quarter mile.  I felt throughout the race like I went out too fast, but I really could not get into the hurt as much as I would like.  Just sort of in a grind …

I do think this course is slower than the T-day course, as there I finished 3 secs ahead of Lori Walker (17:37, 17:40).  She finished behind me here as well – so we were both slower.  Same thing with Kyle Hubbart.  Or I might just be trying to reconcile there a bit.

Had a great warm down with the ultra crew, just loving the conversation, the spirit.  But I felt sort of stupid when Scott asked me if I did ultras.  “Umm, well I did a 29 mile race with a burro.”  14 miles on the day.

Anyway – there is a bit of a sting to this today, but I ain’t gonna dwell too much on that here (there will be other miles for that).  Today was a good day for the spirit.

Food log
AM – bannana, coffee
Post race – gatorade, orange,
Lunch - fruit salad with yogurt, OJ
Dinner – piece of KZ’s b-day cake, BIG salad, bread toasted w/ butter
Evening – decaf tea

Alternative exercise – did about 45 minutes of weights at the rec center in the evening.  Probably the most weights I have done in 20 years (since the service).  Let’s say I ain’t bench pressing what I was back then and leave it at that.  And the weighted leg presses on the day of a 5k are just beautiful.  I expect this to all hurt quite a bit tomorrow.