Sunday, September 28, 2008

St. Gregory's 5k - Birthday Marathon


Yesterday I ran the St. Gregory's 5k. St. Gregory is a Benedictine college. I like the place because you see monks walking around in robes. They blessed the race last year, but we had a less colorful blessing this year. I sized up the competition and saw that I only had one running club age group rival. They moved this race date, and there were fewer people this year. We took off and he was ahead. I decided that I'd better get ahead of him right away because I know near the end of a race I get the "I don't cares." I don't care if he beats me, I don't care who passes me now, I don't care that I'm near a P R. So I speed up and pass him within a few blocks. I had set my Garmin for a :21 minute race. This would be a P R for me. I was ahead of pace the whole time, and I felt as though I might get under 21 minutes for the first time. But on the main street we pass through this underpass and the Garmin lost the signal. This is an out and back on that portion, so I lost the signal twice and I wondered if the Garmin picked up correctly. Anyway I felt like I had first in age group locked up and was starting to gasp for air near the finish. When I was in view of the clock, I saw that it was just passing 20 minutes..... WOW. So I held pace and finished in 20:28. A new PR for me by 47 seconds. I felt pretty good about that, and feel pretty good about either this year or next year being able to get below 20 minutes.

I'm planning to run a marathon this coming Sunday, Oct. 5th. I'm only doing it because that's my birthday, and I just thought it would be cool to run one on my "new age group" birthday. I have no big expectations, it's a wildlife park marathon, and not conducive to a fast race. So my plan is to treat it like a long training run.

My granddaughter called me yesterday and wanted to spend the night again. Since I was home alone, I said yes. So that took care of running this morning. But I got her back to her mom by noon and decided to do an easy trail run. I went to the Draper trails and did an easy 5 miles.

3 comments:

Kat Miller said...

Congrats on the PR! I can't even imagine running that fast! Have a great birthday, and a great birthday marathon!

Charlie said...

Reece,
thank you for your comment on my blog, I really appreciate it. Running has been more miss than hit, but Im not complaining too much. Im planning on pacing a friend at the mother road, so I'll be trying to get in some runs before then. I really wanted to do the Spirit..Survival 26.2, but being so close to my son's due date I will hope for next year. Look like a cool location, does the route climb Mt. Scott? Anyway Reece, I hope I can run with you again sometime sooner than later. Keep in touch. Keep up the blogging.

DawnB said...

congratulations on a new PR and good luck this weekend!!!