Shea’s Chase 5K Race Report

Yesterday I ran the inaugural Shea’s Chase 5K in Greensboro. Honda was one of the corporate sponsors, and said we employees could run for free (they paid the registration fee), and for a good cause, so it was kind of a no brainer. The race benefited the Mental Health Association of Greensboro. My classmate Jeff Beals died of suicide when we were 15 years old. 9th grade. He was popular, hilarious, and fun-loving, and I know his family & friends still miss him tons. I kind of wanted to do something to honor Jeff, but since we were acquaintances and not close friends, I just ran with Jeff in mind (vs. putting something on my shirt or whatnot). Unfortunately, I just did a Google search, and came up short on his picture 🙁 But I hope I honored Jeff’s memory, nonetheless.

Anyhow, I hadn’t raced since Salem Lake, so I looked forward to it all week. I treated it as a “no pressure” type race. No goals (well, except to be fast, haha) and not really caring how it ended up. Just for the fun of racing. Sometimes I think it works out better that way. I took my Garmin watch but told myself I wouldn’t check the time until the end–and I didn’t. I only checked distance once, when I guy nearby asked how much further to go (answer: half a mile). I wore my green St. Leo 10K shirt–green for mental health awareness.

Good thing it was a “no pressure” race, because of course Asher chose Friday night to wake us up about 5 times 🙁 Not sure if it’s his molars coming in or what, but it’s funny because he will only go back to sleep for Daddy. If I go in and cover him up, tell him to go back to sleep, he responds by crying more. Oh well! Needless to say, I felt worn out and lacking energy Saturday morning, plus the race started at 11, so I sat around for several hours after breakfast. Good for digestion, not great for motivation. I did have fun with these two, who we affectionately (and accurately) call Chaos {Asher} and Mayhem {Gabe}.

We headed over to the Railyard area, and I hopped out of the van with the umbrella since it was raining. I figured a lot of people might “punk out” and skip the race since it was rainy, but the temps were fine (upper 60’s) and the rain wasn’t coming down hard at all. I got my race #, we found parking, and we hung out til the race began. Not ideal with both kids, but we made it work 😉

I thought maybe it would be a small race, as some local inaugural races can be, but they had almost 500 people sign up (383 finished, so I guess the rain deterred about 100 people? They missed out!)

I did a quick warm-up, not even 5 min of jogging, plus my dynamic stretches of lunges, “toy soldier” kicks for the hammies, and leg swings for the hips/butt/groin. The boys walked down the block with me. It was a fun, funky area with restaurants, cute shops, breweries, and antique stores. I made several trips to the bathroom and pondered taking my Immodium tablet, but ran out of water, so that was that. I did take a 40mg caffeine Gu espresso, 15 min before the start. I find the caffeine ones really give me a kick, but sometimes upset my stomach. Not yesterday though, yay!

I saw a few co-workers at the start, so I lined up with them. I wasn’t as close to the front as I would’ve liked, but I told myself it really didn’t matter. I went out a little fast, as I usually do, but I reigned it in a little. I felt good, so I just went with it. Had my iPod with great tunes, and just ran my race. There were lots of turns, so I got turned around and didn’t know which direction was back to the finish, so I felt a bit disoriented, but whatev. Here’s the course, with my Garmin data:

Shea's Chase 5K route — Shea’s Chase 5K route

Around mile 2, I fell in step with a runner dude and stayed with him for a while, maybe a mile, then eventually I surged. My breathing was hard during mile 3, as I tried to hang on to a fast pace instead of fading. Finally I recognized the street we were on, and I gave it my all to the finish. As I rounded the corner, I saw the clock was just turning 23:00 minutes!!! (My goal was sub-24). I came in right behind some college soccer players, so they kinda blocked my husband from getting any good pics of me, but it’s OK. He still got these two 😉

I was happy to see I beat a 20 year old soccer player… maybe he wasn’t trying his best, but it still felt good 😉

I was pumped that my watch read 23:14 when I stopped it! 23:09 was the official time.

Javi told me that I came in 4th female, but he had missed one and I came in 5th. He told me I definitely won my age group, as all the ladies before me were older. (Indeed, they were 49, 46, 61, 65, respectively! Dang I hope I can improve into my 40’s… and 60’s!!) I saw my watch said 3.00 miles, so it wasn’t a full 5K (again, just like Dixie Divas!), so I can’t claim that to be my PR, but it certainly gave me more confidence that my training is working. I’ve been doing intervals and a tempo each once a week. My splits were:

Mile 1, 7:26
Mile 2, 8:01
Mile 3, 7:42

Here’s the leaderboard:

Very happy with that. The course was hilly and I didn’t have great energy, but I’ll take a 1st place age group and sub-24 near-5K 🙂 I need to quit going out so hard, and focus on making that middle mile one where I don’t fade. Next up is the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Strut 5K in Winston-Salem.

The post-race event was amazing, with the usual bagels and bananas, plus grapes, pizza, hot dogs, fresh popcorn, peanuts, candy, chips, and beer. Free for everyone, so we had lunch there while we waited on the awards ceremony. My co-workers are pretty fast too–1 guy won his age group, and another lady got 2nd in hers, after running the NYC marathon just a week ago! So, they averaged the top 5 times on each team and guess what? Team HondaJet took home the Fastest Team award!