Race: Moonlight Madness 5K (my 7th time running!) Also my first race since the PCT adventure!
Goal: Somewhere in the 25 minute range—faster than last year’s sadness (that didn’t even get its own race report!)
Gear: My new-to-me Oiselle crop (thank you MM!), Oiselle flyout shorts, Smartwool socks, Altra Kayente, and my Bose Soundsport Free ear buds, Garmin 935, and Whoop band. Plus K braided my hair so I could have my first ever #fastbraidfriday!
Gut: Ate a banana at 4 PM, drank ~24 oz of Nuun strawberry lemonade electrolytes, then 1 cup of rice with 1 fried egg at 5 PM, for the 8 PM race start. Worked perfectly!
Weather: Thankfully not hot like last year. Upper 60’s with a nice breeze. I wasn’t over hot, which was great!
Pre-Race: Well… this was a LONG week at work. After I ate my 5 PM dinner, I laid down for about 30 minutes, without falling asleep, just to rest. I also did a brief foam roll (with the stick) before I left. That seemed to help a lot. I arrived at the race around 7, got my race number, walked back to the car to put my T-shirt away, then started my warm-up at 7:15. Ran 1.5 miles slow, just to get moving. Met up with a work colleague S and her husband G, so passed the time chatting before the race started. The port o’ john line actually went quickly, so I somehow timed everything really well. No pre-race nerves, and S’s advice to me was: “Have fun!” Dammit… I’m gonna enjoy this!
Race: Started a few minutes early. This was my first time running with my Bose ear buds. I waited a few minutes before turning them on. The first mile was downhill, so I tried not to go too fast. I didn’t look at my watch when it dinged for each mile. Thought it would be better not knowing. I saw SM, who I used to work with at DH. Just tried to enjoy my music and run my own race!
The second mile has lots of uphill, and I wondered if hills ever feel easier? Do I not train them enough? I was feeling it at the turnaround, but thankfully had plenty of downhills to enjoy after all that climbing.
Only had one close call—a boy in a push cycle wheelchair went by me very closely, and quickly, and had I veered a foot or so to the right, we might have collided. I didn’t have my music playing loudly, so I’m not sure if he said something and I missed it, or he was quiet. Either way, was very glad we didn’t have any incident.
I knew I was almost there when I passed my van, parked 0.3 miles from the finish. I was breathing hard and my legs were very tired. Didn’t know if I would have any kind of finishing kick, but somehow managed with 0.1 to go to fire it up (to a sub-6 minute per mile pace!) That felt great! Saw the clock just turn 25 minutes.
Results: Ran a 25:06, which was 1.5 minutes faster than last year (but a minute off my fastest time here in 2016). I still want to go sub-23, so even though I’m a ways off, for running a hilly course on a Friday night, I am VERY happy with that performance. I gave it a 95% effort—didn’t want to be totally gassed and still need to drive home. Saw S at the finish and she got this pic of me:
I ended up 7th in my age group of 62, and 15 of 331 women. Overall, I was 79 of 626 people. At first I was a tad disappointed with 7th place, since I’ve been consistently top 3 for nearly all the races this year. My time would have won the next age group up and down from me, so that makes me feel better—still want to be in the 22-23 minute range though 😊 S also made me feel better, as she was so excited for me! Could this be the start of a comeback??
Recommend: For sure! This is the race I’ve ran the most—it just has such a fun vibe, with beer & pizza, families, and a cool park in downtown Winston. The course isn’t my fave, but the race is quite competitive. I would love to place in my age group again (happened once, in 2016).
Not related to this race but:
I started wondering why I’m still doing all these race reports. I think I need the data to see if my training is working, and also I enjoy reliving the races (well, the good ones!) so I keep documenting these. Right now, I’m in week 4 of my interval training program. I decided to merge my 5-week interval training with 10 weeks of half marathon training, to make a 13 week program (since they overlap for 2 weeks). I have a 10K coming up in 2 weeks that probably won’t go so well, but since I’ve been doing the interval training, I feel like I’m getting stronger and faster. I also am trying (unsuccessfully) to add 2-3 days of strength training into my schedule, even if it’s just 10-15 minutes. Hoping to get more consistent there, and get much stronger and faster during this next training block. I also have been eating pretty much whatever I want, so I know I need to get more veggies in, especially to replace all some of the desserts I’ve been chowing down 😊
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