Rock n' Run 5K Race Report

This past Saturday was the Rock n' Run 5K in Casselberry.  The second race in the Track Shack Race Series.  It's been a month since the first race, but it hasn't cooled off much at all yet.  And, my training has been pretty spotty this whole summer, so I wasn't expecting anything earth shattering.

I haven't been running a whole lot of workouts.  But, I figured my race strategy would be to try to go out at ~5:30 and hold that as long as I could.  That would give me about a 45 second PR and I haven't run any workouts that indicated I should be able to hold this pace.  So, it sounded like a good plan!  At least I would challenge myself.

The Rock n' Run is a fun race around the "scenic" Casselberry golf course.  Ok, it's not the best looking golf course out there.  But, the race route was pretty much flat, so it had that going for it.  Also, it was this race, two years ago, where I broke 20 minutes in a 5K for the first time!

There were a couple bands out on the course.  My bib came with a couple of rip off tags with band names on them so I could vote for my favorite band.  I honestly don't remember any of the band names or the songs they were singing.

I do remember turning left, with about 1/3 mile left to go, a band on the corner and the lead singer yelling out "This guy is going to give me a high five".  So, I ran over and gave him a high five, probably the highlight of his day.  He's just lucky I didn't throw up on him.  It was this guy, I found him on Track Shack's facebook page:

Apparently, he's a high five whore.  I thought we had something special.  Oh well, back to the race.

So, the first mile went according to plan.  I went through the first mile in 5:35.  The only problem is I was really hurting already and I had two more miles to go!  Gah!

I tried to keep the same pace for the second mile, but every time I looked down at my Garmin I was going slower.  First it was 5:40, then 5:43, then 5:47.  I stopped looking at my watch.  I ended up going through the second mile in 5:51.  The second mile is usually when I slow down the most during a race, and the same think happened during this one.  It's weird too, because the second mile is when I pass the most people.  I guess there's a silver lining there.  I'm slowing down, but not as much as a lot of the people in front of me.

The last mile, I just tried to hang on.  I know I said the course was flat, mostly flat, but it seemed like the last mile was all up hill.  I slowed down even more on the last mile with a 5:57.

And then it was a slight right and the pain was over!  I finished in 18:05, 15th overall.  That's my second fastest 5K ever, not too bad.  It would have been nice to break 18 minutes for the second time.  But, that will have to wait until 2015.  The next race in the race series is the UCF 5 miler in October.  No more 5Ks scheduled for this year.