Myself, Zach's cousin Chris, and Chris' girlfriend Eileen and I managed to make it out the door Saturday morning and to the Hampton Rotary 5K in Hampton Beach. The race is usually run in August along with the Seafood Festival but was moved this year to April to avoid the usual insanity that comes with the festival. The weather was nice: warm, breezy and sunny.
The course was an extremely flat out and back. Along it were some sweet views of the ocean and some less sweet views of the dead town of Hampton Beach still in it's off season. The unfortunate aspect of the course was the lack of shade. While the sun was nice, it was not fun to run in the blazing heat the entire race with only one water stop. All in all though, a good course to run a fast 5K on.
However, I did anything but that. I suppose that's what not running a lot for the past few months will do to you. Because of the lack of training I didn't really go into it with any expectations, only hopes of finishing sub-24:00. Sadly, this was not achieved. I ended up clocking a 24:27 to finish 28th out of the field of 77. I did end up going out in a 7:35 which was much faster than I thought I would. Mile two was surprisingly faster than mile one (7:27) though I think it might have been a little short since mile 3 was 8:22 and it didn't feel like slowed down that much.
All in all, I was OK with how things went; now I have a place to start from.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Seacoast Half
Last week I signed up for the Seacoast 1/2 Marathon. Only 6 months early; no big deal. It's good to have some bigger to work towards now though. I'm actually pretty excited to run this race. I've been told that it's a fast course and has good goodies. It also draws a big crowd; the max registrant number (1200) is usually reached by mid-September. The goal time as of now is 1:43:43 (7:55/mile) which I think is pretty attainable if I meet the pre-goal goals of sticking to my training plan and losing weight. At the very least, I'd like a PR, which shouldn't be too hard, especially if I do even a fraction of the training I have planned.
My next race is coming up next weekend. I'm dragging Zach out again but this time only for a 5K. I don't really have a goal for this one, but sub-8:00/mile would be nice!
I've been doing ok with training though a death in the family last week resulted in no miles run for the week. It's been getting much more enjoyable to get out the door now that it's warmer out and lighter later. I'll only get to experience the nice Spring running for a couple more weeks though, which is a major bummer. I'm heading to Houston for the essentially month of May for a field project which'll mean a lot of treadmill running to avoid death by heatstroke and/or pollution inhalation. I'll also have to probably do most of my running in the early AM due to the workload demands of fieldwork, which is a drag. I'll have to get used to it though I guess; morning runs will probably be my reality for the NH summer which just might be worse than May in Houston minus the constant pollution problem.
My next race is coming up next weekend. I'm dragging Zach out again but this time only for a 5K. I don't really have a goal for this one, but sub-8:00/mile would be nice!
I've been doing ok with training though a death in the family last week resulted in no miles run for the week. It's been getting much more enjoyable to get out the door now that it's warmer out and lighter later. I'll only get to experience the nice Spring running for a couple more weeks though, which is a major bummer. I'm heading to Houston for the essentially month of May for a field project which'll mean a lot of treadmill running to avoid death by heatstroke and/or pollution inhalation. I'll also have to probably do most of my running in the early AM due to the workload demands of fieldwork, which is a drag. I'll have to get used to it though I guess; morning runs will probably be my reality for the NH summer which just might be worse than May in Houston minus the constant pollution problem.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Road Race PRs
Instead of doing work that I really need to do, I decided to try and come up with a list of my road race PRs. I know my cross-country and track PRs pretty well from high school and college but haven't never really taken the time to look at my road race times until now. After an exhaustive google and cool running searches, here's what I came up with:
Road Race PRs
5K - 19:01 - 2002
4 mile - 26:56 - 2000
5 mile - 31:34 - 2004
10K - 50:53 - 2008
1/2 Marathon - 1:59:42 - 2008
Because I was competing on a team for 3 seasons, there wasn't much time for road racing in my younger years. Funnily however, many of my road race PRs are from early 2000 when I was competitive. This isn't surprising, considering I was in good shape during this time. PRs from longer distances (namely the 10K and 1/2 marathon) are not surprisingly from my later years since I didn't attempt to race farther than 5 miles (and that was pushing it) when I was on the team. These times are also slower than what might be expected by looking at my other road PRs which, again, is not surprising given my post-competitive fitness level.
What's kind of cool however is that none of the times are outstandingly fast and are actually quite reachable; I believe I could hit new PRs in the near future for all distances given a bit of consistency on my part (Well, except for maybe the 5-mile and the 5K; aiming to go much faster than those times right now, might be a bit of a stretch right now, though maybe not impossible). This is something I hadn't really thought about until I saw all the times written out. Looks like I have a new running-based goal!
Road Race PRs
5K - 19:01 - 2002
4 mile - 26:56 - 2000
5 mile - 31:34 - 2004
10K - 50:53 - 2008
1/2 Marathon - 1:59:42 - 2008
Because I was competing on a team for 3 seasons, there wasn't much time for road racing in my younger years. Funnily however, many of my road race PRs are from early 2000 when I was competitive. This isn't surprising, considering I was in good shape during this time. PRs from longer distances (namely the 10K and 1/2 marathon) are not surprisingly from my later years since I didn't attempt to race farther than 5 miles (and that was pushing it) when I was on the team. These times are also slower than what might be expected by looking at my other road PRs which, again, is not surprising given my post-competitive fitness level.
What's kind of cool however is that none of the times are outstandingly fast and are actually quite reachable; I believe I could hit new PRs in the near future for all distances given a bit of consistency on my part (Well, except for maybe the 5-mile and the 5K; aiming to go much faster than those times right now, might be a bit of a stretch right now, though maybe not impossible). This is something I hadn't really thought about until I saw all the times written out. Looks like I have a new running-based goal!
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