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Monday, July 10, 2017

Race Report: Firecracker 5k

On the 4th of July I did the Lennox Firecracker 5k. I've done the 10k twice and this is my second year doing the 5k. Leading up to the race, I looked up my previous 5k time there to see if maybe a course PR was in the works. 24:06? No. Nope. I did want to go out hard and just see how long I could hang on to it. It was 97% humidity and 73 degrees, but you never know unless you try right?

I got up early and really wished that I hadn't signed up at 10:18pm the night before, because I wanted to keep sleeping. Kyle agreed to come to the race with me which was great, but he was taking his jolly sweet time getting ready and we ended up leaving our house 10 minutes after I had hoped to be at the race start for my warm up run. Womp. By the time we got there and I picked up my race bib, it was already time to meet up for our group picture and then the picture got taken late so I STILL didn't have time to do a warm up, and it was basically time to start. Harumph. I did get in my glute band exercises and leg swings.



The race started after three failed firecracker duds, with a whistle, and we were off. I told Courtney that I'd ignore my watch, and I listened, for the most part. I was running with a group of ladies in my running group and wanted to stay with them as best I could. Within a few minutes I was already drenched in sweat. I could feel myself slowing down toward the end of the first mile, which makes sense because the one peek I did take at my watch was in the 7's. Oops.

Mile 1 8:15

During the second mile I focused on catching up to a handful of people in front of me. My friends had pulled away a bit, but I thought I could still catch a second wind and pull off a good kick to catch up with them! After I caught up to that small handful, I was pretty lonely and by myself until the race started to merge with 1 and 2 mile folks, mostly walkers at that point. At 1.55 I was at 13:08 so I told myself just over 10 minutes to go, 4 songs. Totally doable.

Mile 2 8:59

The race was a different route this year because the Main Street in town was under construction. I'm not super familiar with the town, so I was excited when I thought we were on the final home stretch of the race. AND we had a few blocks of beautiful shade. I made myself run as hard as I could during the shade, and then I started to see people turn to the left. The illusion was broken, it wasn't a straight shot to the finish as I was hoping/wishing. I saw my watch was close to hitting 26 minutes, so I started counting to 26:16, which would've been an even split for the first half/last half of the race, and eventually ran out of numbers to count. As I turned the corner, I saw the time clock nearing close to 27 minutes so that helped me speed up ever so slightly.

Mile 3 8:51

.13 :56 (7:11 pace)

I ran the 3.13 in 27:02 for a pace of 8:39 (just slightly faster pace than the 5k earlier this month in similar atrocious humidity). The official results had me at 26:58, which is awfully nice of them. :)



Kyle said I came in faster than he was expecting so he didn't get any pictures of me. I asked him how I looked coming through, curious how my form was through the finish, and his response was, "tired. really tired." Well thanks Kyle. :P


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