After my marathon debut I decided to move my focus to the 5km and 10km distances. I had run the Alterna Do it for Dad 10km last year and found it well organized and fun so I signed up again and decided to try for a personal best (sub 49:22) with a whisper goal of going under 47 minutes.
This year the race seemed to be much more popular, I had to park my car in a lot a bit further away from the start than last year, and there definitely seemed to be a lot more people milling around before the races.
The sun was out and it was nice and warm as I put myself through my warm up jog, I felt a bit of stiffness in my left hamstring, probably as a result of a soccer game I had played 2 days earlier, but otherwise I felt in really good shape despite having barely run since the marathon.
The race got off to a late start and I was a bit thrown off after standing in the start/finish area for 15-20 minutes, I forgot to start my Garmin and only realized 150 meters in, so the Garmin splits mentioned below may be slightly off. It wasn’t a problem for me as I just used the “lap pace” screen to keep myself at around the 4:40 mins/km that would see me home in under 47 minutes.
I got off to a bit of a slow start as a lot of walkers seeded themselves too near the front and I had to navigate around them, but once I got going I was thankful for it as my hamstring eased up and I sped up and got to the pace I wanted and felt comfortable there. The first 2.5kms were into a slight breeze and slightly uphill so I decided to stay in a comfortable zone and then speed up slightly on the slight downhill back towards the start finish, clocking 23:17 for the first 5kms.
Splits:
1km – 4:49
2km – 4:38
3km – 4:39
4km – 4:37
5km – 4:34 – 23:17 at halfway point
Having run this race last year, I knew what was to come, a longish uphill stretch that would seem to go on for ever before the turnaround point at 7.5kms at Hog’s Back. I decided to ease off the pace just it a bit and then use the downhill stretch from 7.5km to 10km to run hard to the finish. This strategy turned out to be a good one as it was pretty crowded on the course at this point as the 5km walkers (that were set off in the opposite direction) were all bunched up and although most of them kept way over to the side, a few didn’t realize runners were coming through so a little zig-zagging was necessary. I was wary of speeding up too soon so I held on until about 1km to the end, and then started to up the pace and run as hard as I could. I passed a bunch of runners in the last 500 meters, and a couple in the finishing straight. One runner responded to me as I came up level with me and we sprinted all out to the finish with him pipping me by 3 tenths, but I was glad he responded as it helped me finish a lot faster than I would have had he not forced me to sprint to the limit.
I was so focused on the sprint off that I didn’t even see the clock, I knew my Garmin was wrong so I had a bit of a wait until they posted the results. Final time, 46:26; a new personal best by just under 3 minutes. 26th out of 107 in my age bracket.
6km – 4:48
7km – 4:47
8km – 4:41
9km – 4:34
10km – 4:20 – 23:10 for the second half and a 7 second negative split.
I am really pleased with the result as I felt I ran a smart race and stuck to the plan really well. Next up is to try and beat my 5km PB at the Bushtukah Canada Day road race to get a full sweep of PBs for the year! (…and then maybe try another 8km race, and a ten miler).
