My New 5k PR!

Saturday was spontaneous race day. Truly, those are the best races. Little to no preparation, no freaking out beforehand and if the weather sucks - hey, I just don't go! Plus, this 5k was less than 15 minutes from home at the Chatsworth Black Bear Festival. There was a one mile option (I think it was a fun run) and a timed 5k. I haven't actually run a 5k distance race since....May of 2011. My PR from that race was 27:10, but I knew that my running had improved quite a bit since then.

The other awesome thing about this race? It started at 1:30 in the afternoon. Hallelujah. When was the last time you woke up on a Saturday for a race without an alarm? Fantastic. Unfortunately, that also meant it was a little warm and the sun was out in full force, but I don't think it ever got above 65 degrees so not much to complain about there.

Tim ran this one with me, which was really great. He hasn't been running much lately, but the opportunity to run a small town race where almost everyone is guaranteed a medal is simply too good of an opportunity to pass up. (Spoiler alert: we both got trophies. Boo-ya.)

This might have been the one that was "not blog approved"

Oh, right. Here's the good one.

 So....the race. I warmed up for about 2 miles with easy jogging and threw a few strides in there because I'm pretty sure I read that once in Runner's World. Clearly it must be important. The race itself was gun-timed (as opposed to having a chip) so I started up pretty close to the front - the row behind the speedy high school cross country boys. There was a high-school aged girl in front of me with a dog, and I immediately tried to classify her.

Was she a girl with a dog going out for a fun jog? Or was she a Kara-esque runner with Peanut, a dog who could outrun me any day of the week? Thankfully, she was the former. Whew. I immediately fell into pace behind the first-place woman, and just tried my hardest not to let her get too far ahead of me. Unfortunately, I let the gap grow, so she finished about 30 seconds ahead of me. But...that means I was second overall woman!

Cue disbelief. I know you're all thinking it. I'm proud of how I've gotten faster over the last couple of years, but I'm no second place finisher, right? SMALL TOWN RACES. It's amazing. For $20, I got a really nice long-sleeved shirt and a freaking trophy. And a PR. All in all? Not a bad day.

Final time: 24:30
Splits---Mile 1: 7:33, Mile 2: 7:58, Mile 3:7:55 Final 0.1 Mile: 1:04 (Garmin ran a little long)

Overall, I'm really happy with this race. I know that having someone faster in front of me to chase really helped - she came in about 30 seconds ahead of me, but I know I pushed myself more because of her. I plugged my recent half-marathon PR into a few calculators to see what my estimated time should be, and it said around 25 minutes - so I count it as a success to be faster than the prediction!


Do you always register in advance for races, or do you just show up the day of for smaller events?

I like to always register in advance, but I really hate paying for a race and then backing out of it for whatever reason. So for smaller races, I'm happier to just show up on the day and pay right there. 

Have you ever used race time predictors? (Like this ONE?) Have they been accurate for you?
They have been a pretty accurate guide for me, but obviously they don't take everything into account. I'm especially curious because when I enter some times (like my recent half marathon time) it says I could run a 4:03 marathon - and that would be freaking amazing.