Fight Against Prostate Cancer 5M

This weekend was far less stressful than the same one last year. Saturday was relatively quiet. Sunday, Akiva and I got up pretty early and headed into the city. Neither of us were in the mood to "race" this race, so our plan was to turn it into a long run. Actually, my plan was to run a few miles slow, and then run the race as a tempo run.



We ran the inner loop before the race. Starting at the southwest corner, we ran clockwise, picked up a friend on the east side, and made it to the start of the race with about a minute to spare.



Hmm, I thought we actually ran these a little slower. (No wonder I felt so tired!) We were a touch late and I was worried about picking up our friend and making it to the start on time. I guess that impacted.



The actual race was the "bottom 5 mile loop". Since we weren't really "racing", and we had already run 4 miles, we took it easy in the beginning. Even as the race went on, I dind't push as hard as I usually do. I've been doing a lot of racing lately, and didn't feel the need to push in this one.

At about 3.5 miles Akiva said he was going to slow down. (He was having some foot numbness issues.) I felt pretty good so I decided to instead pick up the pace and finish strong. I was tired, but I knew I had enough in me to make it to the finish without a problem.

With about 0.25 miles left I met up with our third friend. She's (way) more competitive than I am, so I challenged her to beat me, just to help push her along. I sprinted off with about a tenth of a mile to go. Unfortunately, she couldn't keep up, and came in 9 seconds behind me.



I'm not sure of those last 2 splits. I forgot to use the lap button this race, and in fact, didn't even reset it before the race. So during the race I had no idea of my time. But the 4th mile I only half ran, and the 5th mile I really sprinted at the end. So I'm not sure.

My official time was 41:22, for an 8:16 pace. Not bad, considering the "pre-gaming" and that I wasn't pushing hard. (As a comparison, last year I finished in 45:40!)

As I mentioned last year, this race was the first race I ever did. Back in 2000 it was a 5K, and now it's a 5M. It's also gotten more popular as the entire sport of road racing has. In 2000, there were 1,371 finishers. The next time I ran it was in 2003, with 2,867 finishers. Last year there were 4,539 finishers, and this year had 4,993 finishers! It's really getting crowded out there. I'm happy so many people are enjoying this sport, but I really hope they don't have to start limiting race entrants or something like that. They already have a tough time keeping all the runners in the designated recreation lanes. If the trend continues it could be a real problem.

That reminds me. As a result of the crowds I tried to avoid running into the person in front of me by jumping onto the grass on the side of the road. Big mistake. The grass is sloped, and my ankle gave out underneath me. WTF! Two months of physical therapy doesn't seem to have done a damn thing. My ankle has gotten better because of time. The idea behind the therapy was to prevent this from happening again. Sigh... It hurt for a few minutes, but then I forgot about it. I didn't feel anything the rest of the day, but I could feel that it's a little stiff right now. It's really pretty upsetting. I may look into orthotics, but I'm not sure that's the answer.

In the meantime, Happy Father's Day!