I'd been looking for a race to get my 5k time down. I saw this 4k and thought it looked weird (I liked weird) and thought it would be a nice way to try out by speed and practice faster times for a 5k.
My strategy going in was 7:20, 7:10, 7 minute pace for the last half mile. With a time around 18 minutes. Hahahahahahaha
The week before the race I start getting shin splints. And then two days before the race, I realized the route was really hilly. Ugh.
I've been feeling super tired for the last two weeks, so at that thought I lost a lot of enthusiasm for the race.
But the morning of, we show up. (There are no signs)
We sign in. There are no race bibs or swag. The T-shirts are cotton. (All of this is fine with me)
I try to find the hill on the course and can't. And I jog to the start with about 2 minutes to spare. (But there are about 5 minutes of announcements, so I would have been okay.)
And then it's race time. I lined up near the front.
I go out fast. My watch says 6:40 pace. I know to slow down, but two other women are right with me. The first woman falls off at the first turn and I pace on. A dark haired lady (I'd guess early 20s) gets about 10 seconds ahead of me on the downhill. I let her have the lead. I keep her within a few seconds the entire race, and plan to catch her at the end.
The downhill is nice. You run down towards a weird metal silo loop around it and then run UPHILL. The first half of the hill I power up and feel great (thanks hill training), the second half of the hill is a little rougher, but then the course turns, it gets a tad steeper (4% grade) and I've been running a quarter mile and it's awful.
My first mile is 7:10. Which is a little fast but okay.
Then comes that same long hill a SECOND TIME. This is where I want to quit. I'm breathing hard and thinking about barfing. I wonder if I walk how much time it will cost me. But I don't. I finish the hill the second time (and my pace has fallen off considerably) and get to the marker for mile 2.
I feel awful at this point. And my brain is dead. I'm on auto pilot. There's half a mile left and I don't have 7-minute mile pace in me. I run. And the lady in front of me makes a wrong turn. I'm following the guy in front of her and I pause for one second before the course monitor turns her around and I sprint to the finish and win the women's division overall.
And I feel a little bad about this. I MIGHT have kicked her in at the end (she didn't put up much of a fight and kick it in after the wrong turn—that's what I would have done), and I don't think the wrong turned cost her more than 10 seconds, but I was on the course following the leaders. Should she have won? Would I have passed her at the end? We'll call this luck and I hope I'm not a horrible sport. But surely I shouldn't have stopped for her? And this race had no stakes. It won't even show up any any timed races services websites—no athlinks. So there's nothing she lost in this. We'll just say I won my age group and she won hers. She ran a good race.
They handed me a card at the finish.18:28. For eighth overall. She finished 10-15 seconds behind me. They handed me a medal and that was that.
I got a banana and a water. There were no prizes. There was no medal ceremony. They said it was a no frills race and it was. For this, I'm glad it's a good fundraiser for them. I worry about races not raising money when they have to buy timing services or pay for a police escort (they did neither of this since it was on their land and they own the timer). This is all fine with me. A prize is nice but I don't need it.
So it wasn't the race I'd hoped for. But because of the hill, I'll say I did OKAY. (Also no shin pain during the race, though I did take medicine. I was a little achey after the race, but mostly fine).
Honestly, I don't think I'd do this race again. And I'm currently looking for FLAT 5k courses.
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