This past Saturday, I participated in the Virginia Highlands Summerfest 5k. This marked the halfway point in my training for the 10K I’m working towards, and also a good progress indicator to see how my training was coming along. It had been four weeks since my first 5K where I ran a 29:45.

I tried to get to sleep the night before at a reasonable hour, however, had issues falling to sleep. The last time I saw the clock it read 1:00AM, and my alarm was set for 6:00AM. On top of that, I woke up at least 4 times through the night – not a recipe for a great nights sleep! However, 6:00 rolled around and I was up and didn’t feel too horrible. After waking up and making it through a shower, I was ready to go. This race was in my area, so I was able to walk from my apartment to the start of the race – it was only 1.5 miles or so. I found the start area and sat around listening to my iPod about 15 minutes until it was go time.

Soon enough, it was time to start. They didn’t bother to have a loud speaker, so I just waited until I felt the surge of people take off. This time I started in the middle of the pack. (Yay, I learned a lesson!) I had checked out the course on Google Maps the night before, and knew the 1st mile was generally uphill, the second mile was mostly downhill, and the third was up and down. I intended to take it nice and easy the first mile, but we all know how plans can go in a race. For the first half mile or so I was so focused on avoiding the slower people in front of me and just trying to get out of the giant herd, that I didn’t notice I was going much too fast. I slowed it down a bit, but still came across the first mile marker in 9:40.

My goal had been to negative split the race, but after that first mile I was unsure. The course had started to go downhill after mile 1, so my heart rate was dropping back to a reasonable beat. That mile went pretty fast, however, it turns out I was 15 seconds slower on the second mile (that was downhill) than the first uphill mile. Ooops!

The third mile I was still relaxed and just running at a comfortable pace. I enjoyed the course as it was back in a nice shaded neighborhood and was just a fun little circuit. As I started getting closer to the end I slowly started to pick up the pace. I was feeling great so dropped into a full sprint 200m out. I could have picked it up sooner than that, but didn’t want to fall on my face right at the end. I crossed the line in 28:15 – a 1:30 improvement from my previous race. I was quite happy with this, even if I wasn’t able to negative split the race! If you are a data geek, you can see the data on Garmin Connect

The race was quite fun, and I was pleased with my improvement. It was good to see some hard evidence that the training I’ve been doing has paid off. I don’t have another 5K on my schedule right now, and the next race will be my 10K. I honestly have no time goal for that, I just wanted to go do a 10K, and I wanted to do Peachtree! I’ll worry about going for time with my second 10K whenver I pick it out.