My training had been going relatively well for the last 3 weeks since the Lehigh Valley Half-Marathon. I’ve been concentrating on steady mileage and have been seeing some improvements in pace versus heart rate, but have not been attempting any speed workouts or tempo runs in order to minimize risk of muscle/joint related injuries. I also decided this would be my first 5k race that I’d run in trainers instead of racing flats. (While the racing flats are lighter and would probably save a few seconds the lower heel also increases the strain on the calf muscles.)
I was pretty excited about racing in this 5k since it has been about 4 months since my last 5k.
I arrived at City Island about 40 minutes before the 8 AM start. The island was buzzing with activity as lots of armed forces personnel were working on getting the vehicles (tanks, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, etc) and other displays ready. Picking up the bib was painless because the race was pretty small (about 215 people). I jogged around for about 15 minutes, saw a few people from the Harrisburg Road Runners and then went over to the starting area.
I had lined up about 5 rows back from the front figuring I’d would probably be in the top 20 or 30 finishers. As people were getting ready to start, a helicopter came down and was landing about 100 feet away. This was extremely loud and I was wondering if people would actually be able to hear the race director over the noise. We waited for a minute or two and the noise started getting decreasing as the engine spun down. The race directory spoke loudly, spent 10 seconds of thanking the armed forces, we had a quick round of applause and then were off.
The race starts on a curvy section of the City Island road (next to the mini train station) and heads counter-clockwise around the island. It was a fairly congested for the first 100 yards as people negotiated the curves and a few very large puddles. After about three minutes of the “is this too fast? too slow? too fast?” internal monologue I started settling into a good rhythm.
We hit the Walnut Street Bridge at about the three quarters of a mile. I noticed everyone was running on the small concrete walkway (as opposed to some people running on the iron lattice which happens in most Harrisburg races). I looked ahead and saw a vehicle parked on the other end of the bridge that was blocking most of the non-walkway part so figured I would stay on the concrete too. There were a few people walking from Harrisburg to City Island across the bridge who I felt bad for. Due to a timing misfortune, they were being passed by hundreds of people flying past them in the opposite direction all crowded into 5 feet of space. I crossed the 1 mile mark right as we exited the bridge in 6:26.
The course took an immediate right turn and we ran down to the walkway on the lower-level. I don’t really like this turn in races since you have a nice downhill and then need to make an immediate150 degree turn to head up-river which means you burn some time slowing for the turn.
We ran about 3/4 of a mile up-river. I was feeling good here and keeping a relatively even pace hovering around 6:20/mile. We next had to run up a 40 foot or so hill to get back to the upper-level. As I was starting up the hill the leaders came zooming down past me. I tried to keep an even effort going up and just after the hill, but I could tell the pace was dropping off. We ran a quick loop around the garden and then it was my turn to head back down the hill to the lower-level again. I hit the two mile mark just before heading down the hill with a 6:29 split.
The course then headed back down the river to the Walnut Street Bridge. I was definitely starting to fatigue and was concentrating on maintaining good form and cadence. I passed a handful of people here and had a mini-battle with one runner where I passed her and then she passed me back a hundred yards later. I finally passed her again a short distance from where we had to climb back up to street level. I was trying to push as hard as I could while running back across the bridge, but the pace and the last hill had taken most of the fight out of me. I was able to pick it up a little bit and ended up finishing in 19:51, good for 18th place out of roughly 215 people.
My Garmin measured the course at 3.08 miles, so it lost about 150 feet, which isn’t surprising given the sharp turns. What really surprised me was that my auto-recorded splits for miles two and three were both 6:29.36. Now I know that if the Garmin had been able to measure the corners correctly I would have not had splits identical to within a hundredth of a second, but it was kind of funny to see those times. Apparently I’ve got even pacing down to a science, now just need to work on getting faster.
Overall I was pretty happy with the race effort.
Motionbased
