Before the Ironman70.3 in Texas I did 3 other races this season.
- 5K Magnuson Series
- 10K Fit for Vitality
- Honeywagon Halfmarathon
I will do a series on these 3 races to capture all my races from 2012 forward in this blog.
The first race I did this year, was the a 5K of the Magnuson Series on January 14th.
According to my schedule I was supposed to do a 5K a week earlier. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a race on that date which meant I wouldn’t be racing on a taper weekend. The only adjustment we made to the training, was that I had one strength training less and the day before the 5K only a swim training.
Since, the schedule also called for a 2h bike ride I decided to bike to the rice. It was a 40min bike ride in just above freezing weather. But at least it was dry. Once at the race I was told that it will start 5min late and I did my usual warmup. Suddenly I noticed that no other athletes are around me anymore and it was about the original start time. So I turned around only to notice that everyone was lined up and ready to go. I sprinted to the start, took of my jacked jump into the front line and then the than without a second rest the gun shot. Note quite the race start I envisioned…
The plan was to start with a 5:45min/mile pace. After a couple of turns and the first hill my new Garmin watch was telling me that I am closer to a 5:55min/mile pace. Checking my pulse 188 also told me that I don’t have that much room to play. So my strategy was to just stick with it and slowly increase the speed After the first mile I was at 6th position but I also noticed that the 5th guy couldn’t keep up with #3 and #4 anymore. I was continuously closing in. at 1.5 miles I was running behind him. I was thinking of coasting along behind him because of the head wind. But then he was going to slow. So I overtook him but he wouldn’t give up that easily and stayed in my window shadow. Then we came into the really curvy narrow area and I could hear his steps all the time. I started to question myself if I can keep that up? My HR at 190. Well my coach wanted a max HR (his words: “Bury yourself!”) that is the way to get it. So I didn’t think about it too much an just keep going With a little less then 1 mile to go there were a couple of spectators taking pictures and then I noticed that they weren’t taking pictures of me but rather of the guy behind me. And then they also cheering for him to keep it up… Great were is my fan squad. Then we took a right turn on to the finish line road which first goas 200 yards from the finish away till the turn around and then straight back to the finish. I saw the first two guys run towards me and then I noticed that the third and forth had a number on for the 10K. Wow this meant I am in third place. Great even more motivation to not let the guy pass me. Turnaround point… Finally time for the truth… how close is he. When I turned around he was right there I couldn’t believe it. And my though was, yes coach you shall get your max HR. For the last half mile we both were continuously increasing the speed. My only thought was that I won’t give up the third place that easily. All the cheering from his friends didn’t help him. I finished third. My Garmin revealed that I was running the last couple hundred yards with a 5min/mile with a max HR of 194.
I finished with 18min20, since it was a small race there wasn’t an award ceremony and the only thing left for me was a 40min bike ride home. It didn’t help that it started snowing and raining with wind. I was suffering more during the bike ride home because of the cold finger and feet then the race. At the end I was so cold (because of the wet soaked clothes) that I wasn’t able to take of the gloves and get the key out to enter into my apartment building. Luckily the concierge let me in to warm up inside till I was able to move my fingers again.
At least the cold weather must have helps with the recovery since I barely had sore muscles 🙂
Good news, in the final ranking I took second place because one person in front of me wasn’t competing.
New 5K PR – 18:20 and a 2nd place in January, can’t complain about that.
Note: In February in the QT2Systems training camp in Florida, I improved the 5K PR on the track to a 18:07.
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