Some coworkers and I ran in the Susan G. Komen 5K this weekend in Virginia Beach. It was the first time running in a 5K since last November, and I was excited to see how I would do this time. I ran the last one in 29:30, but a lot has changed since then.
We were running late all morning, but got to the starting line with about 5 minutes to spare (thanks to parking at Jen's parents' timeshare. We snapped a quick photo before jumping in line:
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| Me, Jen and Uri. |
There was a lot of room at the front of the line, so that's where we positioned ourselves. It was strange being within 10 feet of the start, with a few thousand people behind us.
The gun fired and off we went. My goal was to go out around an 8:00/mile pace and see how I felt, so I went out hard... and found myself with a 7:07 time for the first mile! I was starting to hurt pretty badly so I slowed up a bit and did the second mile in 7:51. The final stretch of the run was on the boardwalk adjacent to the beach, and there was a strong crosswind, so my time for the third mile was 8:05. The wind died down for the final 0.11 miles, which I did at a 5:48 pace.
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| Final stretch. I'm not heel-striking, I swear! |
I finished in 23:41, which beats my previous PR of 25:39 by almost 2 minutes! It's also almost 6 minutes faster than my last 5K race. I was also 97th out of 548 men (they didn't have age groups). Granted a lot of people walked, but I'm still very happy with this. I've improved quite a bit in the past year. Who knows where I'll be next year... sub 20:00?
Here are some other pictures from the race:
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| The winner, right before crossing the finish line. |
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| A bunch of guys wore pink bras during the race. I want to do this next year! |
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| Her sign says "Of course they're FAKE, the real ones try to kill you!" |
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| Briana and I in front of the Neptune statue. Is that a Livestrong bracelet on his wrist? |
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