Special thanks to Brooks for letting me log some training miles with the new Adrenaline GTS 21! I have been so impressed with this shoe and what Brooks has done with it (used to wear this shoe in high school!) Many support shoes can feel clunky; but the GTS feels secure and cushioned without adding the feeling of weighing you down each step. This shoe is exactly what I want to slip my feet into after a hard track or workout effort – it makes my cooldown miles feel supported and fun! Many thanks to Zappos for delivering it within two days of ordering it from the site, thanks to the expedited shipping that comes with being a Zappos Rewards member!
2020 has been all about keeping it together and just figuring things out as they come. After being unable to run/train since 2016, I’ve embraced this “no race year” with open arms, and have enjoyed plugging along with training; just feeling thankful that I can run again.
I’ve always considered myself better in longer efforts, like the marathon and half marathon. For years my times never matched up, and my marathon was always my strongest/fastest distance…while the thought of a 5k made me shudder. Even at my fittest: no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get beyond the 19:30-40 range. 5ks just weren’t for me, and I was ok with that!
But when I received a message on Instagram from the Trials of Miles account, I was interested. They were hosting a cross country-style race series, where you’d have the opportunity of progressing each week if you made a time cut. I really doubted my abilities to go past the first, 5k round…but I figured at least I’d try to get a 5k PR out of it and be happy.
The series (and 5k) was above and beyond anything I could’ve imagined: it got me seeing where fitness was with a shorter distance, which is something I never would’ve tested by myself. Hitting a sub-19 5k in September (an 18:52) was not something I ever imagined, so I was thankful for the opportunity.
A few weeks ago, I received a text from a friend who was thinking about getting a couple women together to run a track 5k. It seemed like we all were in a similar fitness range, so it’d be a great opportunity to pull each other along. I told her I was in!
Then, when a local Race Director caught wind of the idea, he suggested he could bring a timing mat and maybe invite a couple high school kids…and before we knew it, there was a bonafide word-of-mouth 5k event happening.
Based on how I felt after the 18:52 and the work I had put in between then and November, I thought I might be able to snag a time somewhere around 18:30 – and I was right! I crossed the timing mat with an 18:31 and felt solid with my mental and physical performance.
Race Recap
Seems silly to recap a 3-mile race, but this was my first 5k race…and it was an experience! Here are some thoughts about those 18 minutes of my life:
-My seed/lane was 6, and I lined up next to a very nervous high schooler. She was totally psyching herself out about the race and her coach was there on the line to support her (something I’d imagine happens in the high school setting often). As her coach was calming her down, I turned to her and said, “hey, we’re all in this together” …which I’m pretty sure she’s never heard from a “competitor.” You could tell that her + her coach suddenly had this wave of realization/relief, as if to say, “oh yeah. You’re in a heat with women who do this FOR FUN. Go have fun.”
-I passed that girl somewhere in the second mile. I told her to stick to my shoulder, and that lap of focusing on having her stick to me felt like it went by in a flash. Turns out when you focus on doing something for the good of someone else, it really makes your own effort feel easy.
-When you pass someone on the track in an event like that, you have to COMMIT. It’s this weird tango of trying not to trip the person ahead of you…but also realizing that you probably could go faster than her…so it’s ok to push around her and keep going.
-Starting with the group definitely slowed me down in the beginning, and I think that’s a good thing. My legs were ready to GO that day.
-The run was much more painful than the 18:52 run, but I kept telling myself, “of course this is painful…you’re running 2-3 sec faster each lap than last time.” My goal was to go out around 90-91 for each quarter and see what happened. I was hoping to actually get closer to 86 sec quarters by the end, but I didn’t. Something to work on.
-I was, however, able to turn my brain off a bit. The high schooler’s coach was screaming out quarter splits each lap, so I didn’t have to look at my watch (I did press the lap button) – and I was so zoned out that I didn’t even lap the final quarter. When I did the solo 5k, I was mentally engaged the whole time, checking each 200 and 400.
-I miscounted where we were in the 5k, so I thought we only had 2 laps to go…but we really had 3 (thank god the RD brought the lap counter). I think this mistake was a good thing, though, because it kept me in it. The pain sucked, but I kept telling myself, “well you can’t just stop now, you only have a couple laps to go…”
-With 200 to go, the high school girl passed me. In the moment, I let her have it and thought, “yep, this 33-year-old doesn’t have wheels like her.” BUT with 50 meters to go, I put my head down, dug deep, and thought, “hell, why not me?!” – and I got her on the line. A lesson to me that we ALWAYS have one more gear and it’s so mental (and a lesson to her to run through the line, haha!)
With the world constantly changing, here’s to more firsts, like this 5k track race. I might have another crack at it in a couple weeks – so we’ll see if I can keep chipping away at both my time and my savviness of racing other people!
