17:40!! (5:42/mile)
10th place overall (out of 288)
1st in age (out of 13)
Official Results
A New All Time Record! Yes, that’s right. My previous PR (set when I was 17 years old) for a 5K was 17:55. I believe I vomited after that effort, now that I think about it. This time, no vomiting, in fact I felt great afterwards.

The weather was better than last year, for sure, but still cold, mid 20’s. The 6-10 mph wind was not bad enough to effect me as much.

I used my cool Garmin Forerunner GPS watch to pace me this time. I set my ‘virtual partner’ to run the race in 18:00 flat, hoping to beat him. The whole way I kept checking the watch, it telling me how far in front of him I was. After 1/4 mile I was 130 ft in front and went as high as 260 ft, finishing about 230 ft in front at the end. This race attracts a lot of fast runners (top 2 times under 15:40) so I am very glad with a 10th place finish.

What is even better is that I don’t train for 5K racing. To train for 5K’s, you really need to spend a lot of time doing speedwork, and your longest run is the occasional 8-10 miler. TO me, a 6 miler doesn’t even seem like a run (too short) and I do speedwork once a week, because I am training to be a betetr marathoner. If I tried, I bet I could become a pretty good 5K runner, but I enjoy the longer distances in my old age.

I was pretty stunned that I pulled it off. One downside is that now I have to adjust all my paces for my speedwork as I train for my next marathon competition as the paces are a function of your best 5K time. Well, I just trimmed 50 seconds off my best 5K time in the’ modern era’. Great, more work. Ugh.

1Jan07
30:33 (6:07/ mile pace)
4th overall (out of 281)
2nd in age group (out of 39)
Official Results

What a perfect day for a race! Well, as perfect as you could want for New Years Day I guess. Temps in the low 30’s with a stiff 10-15 mph wind. The course was laid out such that we headed into the wind mostly during the first half of the race and finished with it at our back.

This was the third race I did with my nephew, but this time I let him run on his own, without me whipping him all along. He did pretty good finishing 52nd overall. I had not run competitvely for a while so i was pumped up. A 6:07 pace is fine for this distance. I have recently started my official training for the Boston marathon though. It might sound like I am making excuses, not running as fast as I could, I know. Really, I am training to improve my marathon time, not doing nearly enough speed work to do well on 5K’s and the like. I am doing a 5K in a couple of weeks and will shoot for a sub 18 time, but I have reasonable expectations for that.

Instead of a t-shirt (which I have plenty of) this race gave out 16 oz beer glasses, filled with one free beer afterward. That was cool, and for the first time I actually got a post race massage. They are common in big races, but the lines are always long. We were waiting for the awards so i decided to put my name down and hope I got lucky. I did!

One other thing, the people in Wisconsin are slow compared to people in Michigan. If I ran a race with 281 finishers in Michigan (comparable distance) at the pace I did this race, my place would have been in the low teens, not 4th. This is the third race I have run in Wisconsin in ‘the modern era’ and they have all had similair stories. I need to run in Wisconsin more often, it makes me feel good
A great way to start the new year, for sure.