It finally happened. In what could well be my last 5K race this Spring, I hit my goal of a sub-25 minute 5K. Way cool.

Anyway, it was a bit of a drive to get out to the airport, but I guess that beats living next to the airport so I can’t really complain. There was some pretty good traffic going into the parking lot, so we didn’t get there until a little after 7:30 for an 8:00 race. This time I had everything I needed except my GPS (left it in my car when my darling wife offered to drive/cheer). Ah, well. The course is very flat (runways) and they were going to have mile marker clocks, so not a big deal, right?

Anyway, we get to the race just fine. Did some stretching and a little warmup running, but not the mile+ I was able to do before the Chuy’s 5K. In retrospect, I really wish that I’d been there closer to 7:00 and had done the warmup - but there wasn’t really enough recovery time for me to be happy with it. I did run a little and do some butt-kicks and high-knee drills.

Lined up in the chute about seven rows back, just behind Alex - which was good, because we had 10 minutes or so to kill before the airhorn launched us off and its always nice to have someone to talk to. There was a nice yellow plane to serve nominal pacing duties but it wasn’t going to take off, just taxi out ahead of us and veer off to the side once we got going. Anthem, wheelchair start, and then we were off, crossing the start/finish line with four seconds on the clock.

I never noticed the plane after we started, which is pretty weird in retrospect. That’s mainly becase even with the good placement, a 7-wide slow running bloc of identical TShirts had formed that I had to move around, and then I was concentrating more on the race. Really, how do those form so quickly? I didn’t even see them before the start… very weird. Anyway, there was about a quarter mile of taxiway and then we turned right 90 degrees onto one of the main runways.

From the start there was a lot of wind coming from our left sides, and as we turned right it just died down completely. Of course, it hadn’t really died down, it was just blowing almost exactly as fast as I was running. One downside to being out at the airport was that there was absolutely nothing to break up the wind. That made most of the first half just like running through dead air, and it got quite sticky. I hit the first mile marker at 7:30 on the dot, so I’d done a 7:26 pace, which was a bit fast but not too bad.

Running out to the turnaround point was a little grueling, just because the air got so stale. Other than that, pretty uneventful. We were running uphill, but only very slightly. The wind was still with us, though - there was water at about miles 1.4 and 1.7, and the discarded cups from the first stop were blowing alongside us as if they’d decided to join in the race. I dumped water on my head but didn’t try to drink anything, then kept going to the turnaround.

Wow - what a difference 180 degrees made! Now we went from running in dead air to running into an effective 15mph headwind. Unfortunately there wasn’t anyone around me that wasn’t a foot shorter than I was, or I would have tried a little drafting - I’m really not up on that technique though (I really haven’t been fast enough to worry about it before). Got another cup at the second stop, tried to sip a little and tossed it over my head as well. I was alternating a 2-2 breathing pattern with a 2-1 pattern, trying to keep my pace but worried that I was falling off anyway. Then I see the second mile marker, and actually passed it right at 15:04! I’d only slowed down 4 seconds heading into the wind. Thoughts of 25:00 go out the window and I start wondering if I could hit 24:00.

The wind blew but I kept going, thinking about possible blog headlines for my ultra-fast (for me) PR time. Just kept putting one foot in front of the other until we got back to the turnoff, at which point the wind effectively shifted to blowing us right-to-left. I was a trifle concerned about my ITB since I was bracing slightly, but thankfully it was a complete non-issue.

Kept running, running, until I got to the three mile marker which was reading 23:24. Hmm. Can I do a 36 second tenth? That would be a 6:00 pace, probably not. Still, 25:00 is in the bag. Something’s odd though - the finish line still looks like its a long way away. I start second-guessing myself and my math. No, a tenth should take me less than a minute no matter what. Keep running, keep running… its still a long way away. Time to pick it back up as I watch for the clock in the distance. By the time I can read it, its already past 24 minutes - well past! Stop trying to figure out out and kick it. 24:40, 24:50… can I make it before 25:00? Not quite, I see it turn just as I run underneath.

My final clock time was 25:02 giving me a chip time of 24:57.5, a new PR by almost 40 seconds and my first sub-25 minute 5K ever. Damn, but that felt good. After going through the chute, I downed a bottle of water right away, found my wife, and sat down to recover a little. Just took a minute, then went looking for other running friends in the crowd. I met Alex again, and got the story from his Forerunner: Mile 1 was accurate, but mile 2 was short by almost a tenth! Mile 3 was one mile from mile 2, and the finish line was probably correct.

Plugging that information into Excel after getting home, it looks like my splits were somewhere around 7:26, 8:24, 8:19 and 8:01. If I had missed my goal, like fellow AustinFitter Jason did with his 20:05, I’d be really annoyed at whoever placed the markers (found out later that the course was probably certified correctly but that the clocks weren’t on the painted lines). Since I just squeaked mine in under the wire though, I’m not complaining. I got my PR!

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