5 posts tagged “5k”

This year i finished The Greatest 5K Ever in 29:09. 

I realize that this year's finish is 5 seconds slower than last year, which marked my "breaking" of the artificial 30-minute barrier.  However i do have an excuse in that i ran while pushing Adrian along in a stroller.

Running in the "stroller division," i mistakenly thought that i would have a chance at placing... unfortunately i finished fifth out of six, and the only one i beat was a lady just lazily walked through with a Maclaren.  Argh!  At least when i try to manually look for my overall place it looks like i'm in the vicinity of 170/296.  I guess i'll just have to take comfort in the fact that i still outran almost half of the field while "handicapped."  I must admit that i did feel a twinge of schadenfreude whenever i overtook someone. 

Anyway, i wasn't really looking to PR, but rather just to gauge my level of readiness for the upcoming half-marathon in two weeks.  I guess i'm somewhat fit now, as breaking 30 minutes didn't bring me as close to death's door as it did last year.  I still most likely won't reach the magical 2-hour mark, but i will try my darndest to get as close as i can. 

It was an "anniversary" run for me as last year's Mitchell's Run Thru Rockford was my first time participating in an organized footrace.  At least i'm doing something right despite my recent disappointment with the Reeds Lake 10k, as i finished five minutes faster than last year.  At this rate, i'll finish next year's run at around 22 minutes, and in 2013 i should be able to break all records - not to mention some laws of nature - by finishing it in just 2. 

It's nice to see my age grade inching ever upwards.  Maybe in few more months i can break into 50% and be able to call myself "average." 

This is also the year that we welcomed my cousin Teena to the club.  I think this was her first organized footrace, and it seems that she's already eyeing a few more in the months to come. 

Another thing i did yesterday was finally commit to running the Grand Rapids Half-Marathon in October.  I've been hemming and hawing about it for the past few months but finally ponied up the $63 registration fee.  I have serious doubts about being able to complete it in 2 hours, but there's no harm in trying.  Another race that i'm mildly interested in is the Every Stride 10k, which appears to be the Michigan site for the Nike Human Race.  While the cynic in me believes that the event is only a thinly-veiled marketing ploy to sell Nike products, the wannabe-runner side is at least a little bit intrigued. 

 

I finally broke through my personal glass ceiling by completing The Greatest 5k Ever in less than 30 minutes. 

Not that it really means anything in the grand scheme of things.  I'll probably never be anything more than an insignificant little gnat to the running world at large, but i must admit that this minor achievement makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  I mean that figuratively, as i my butt nearly froze off running in 40-degree weather. 

I'd like to finish my next 5k in less than 25:00, but before then i think i'll have to start seriously training for a 10k.  For now it's a little too cold to keep running outside, so i think it may be the end of the season for me.  Not too shabby for an asthmatic chicken-legged starcraft addict with a dislocatable shoulder. 

So yesterday i ran in the Komen Grand Rapids Race for the Cure. 

Unfortunately i missed my target by 22 seconds.  And while an average pace of 9:46 for half an hour is (at least for me) quite an accomplishment, it feels a little bit like consuelo de bobo.

There's another 5k in a week - i hope to come in under 30 for that one. 

Today i finished my first 5k race - Mitchell's Run Thru Rockford - with a time of 32:38.  For my first outing, i guess it wasn't horribly bad, as my target time was less than 33 minutes.  Unfortunately, i finished 42/47 for my age group (30-34) and 875/1193 overall.  On one hand i keep making excuses for myself (e.g. that i'm a normally sedentary person and that i've never really been fit), but on the other, i have to be perfectly honest and admit i'm a little bit disappointed.  The median time for my age group is around 25 minutes or so, so i still have quite a bit of time to lop off.  All the more reason to try harder, eh?

The race itself was fairly pleasant.  We tried to make it a family event of sorts; Gianina walked the 5k while pushing Adrian along in this stroller.  Maybe once he's completely mobile we can all run and try to beat each other.

I've got a few more races that i'm eyeing for the next few months - i hope to finish the next one in less than 30 minutes and perhaps hit 25 with the third.  Then i'll move on to a 10k, half-marathon, and hopefully a full marathon in a year or so.