BALTO 5K Run 2009

Today I ran the Balto 5k. I wanted to run for a couple of reasons. One, I haven't run a 5k in over 2 months. Two, I wanted to see how my speed was going. This run is in a park where I've run a 5 mile race. I knew that it would be a hilly race, so I had no delusions of a PR. Also since I'm concentrating on a long trail run, I haven't done speed work in a while. It was very cold this morning. Okay Northern and Eastern readers, cold is relative. But it is cold to us, below 20 degrees. And considering it was 60 plus yesterday, and 80 on Thursday, we didn't get a chance to acclimate to this weather. I arrived at the park and was disappointed to see that we weren't using the center that the Frigid Five uses. We had to pick up our packets outside, and later wait for the awards at the same place. I picked up my number, and warmed up for about 15 minutes. I then waited in my vehicle until 5 minutes before the start. I got out, and we're off. I had set my Garmin to pace in K's and I was around 4:15 in the first K. I was fine with that, but knew I wasn't going to do all 5 in that amount of time. I was getting winded quickly, and didn't really warm up the way I thought I would. Second K in 4:12, I'm surprised by that. Third K 4:14, fourth 4:16 and 5th in 4:23. My watch said 5:03K in 21:25. I don't know what my official time is because this was an old school timed race. No chips, they pulled your tag after you finished. And I never saw the standings posted. I would guess my time was around 21:15 and I'm fine with that. I would have been fine with 22. I'm also not sure if I won my age group as they had the age groups wrong. I'm 55 and should have been in the 55-59. They have the groups one year off, 46-50, 51-55. I finished second in that group, but the guy that beat me is 51 so we really aren't in the same age group. All in all it was a good run, and I'm pleased to know I haven't lost too much speed by concentrating on long slow runs. Now back to trails and long runs.