Saturday, August 19, 2006
ATC Grand Finale 5K, 8 a.m., Ansley Mall, Midtown Atlanta
#10370 5K 23:54
They described it on their website as a one-loop course starting and finishing at Ansley Mall, runs through the "Sherwood Forest" neighborhood, a bit of a rolling course but not overly challenging.
Well it turned out to be a challenge for me. It was a warm sunny morning and the race was only a few minutes from my house. Registration and the starting line were in the Ansley Mall parking lot. The course ran out the Piedmont side of the parking lot, turned to the right running uphill for a fair distance, and then turned right into a neighborhood of rolling hills. This part of the course eventually formed a loop, which returned runners to the beginning part of the course on Piedmont. From there it was downhill to the finish in the mall parking lot.
I tried to start at a reasonable pace and I thought I had done a good job. At the first mile, I was running a 7:14 pace. By the second mile that had dropped off to 7:31. That is when something got to me. I don’t know if it was those rolling hills, too fast a pace, the warm day, working out too hard the day before, or what exactly factored into it. However, just after the second mile I started really struggling and dropped way off the pace. For a while, I was very concerned about finishing the race without stopping. I was getting very frustrated as my pace got slower and runners started passing me. I am not sure which hurt worse, the stitches in my side, or the people passing me. (Well, okay I do know, but to say would not make me seem very sporting.) My pace on that 3 rd mile dropped to 8:15 although it seemed much slower to me at the time. I did get it together towards the finish and finished with a surprising burst of speed over the last 100 yards or so.
All in all I was a little disappointed with my performance, but proud of the way that I got it back together and managed to finish fairly strong. On a kind of odd note, my average pace was exactly the same as the 10K I ran two weeks ago.
They described it on their website as a one-loop course starting and finishing at Ansley Mall, runs through the "Sherwood Forest" neighborhood, a bit of a rolling course but not overly challenging.
Well it turned out to be a challenge for me. It was a warm sunny morning and the race was only a few minutes from my house. Registration and the starting line were in the Ansley Mall parking lot. The course ran out the Piedmont side of the parking lot, turned to the right running uphill for a fair distance, and then turned right into a neighborhood of rolling hills. This part of the course eventually formed a loop, which returned runners to the beginning part of the course on Piedmont. From there it was downhill to the finish in the mall parking lot.
I tried to start at a reasonable pace and I thought I had done a good job. At the first mile, I was running a 7:14 pace. By the second mile that had dropped off to 7:31. That is when something got to me. I don’t know if it was those rolling hills, too fast a pace, the warm day, working out too hard the day before, or what exactly factored into it. However, just after the second mile I started really struggling and dropped way off the pace. For a while, I was very concerned about finishing the race without stopping. I was getting very frustrated as my pace got slower and runners started passing me. I am not sure which hurt worse, the stitches in my side, or the people passing me. (Well, okay I do know, but to say would not make me seem very sporting.) My pace on that 3 rd mile dropped to 8:15 although it seemed much slower to me at the time. I did get it together towards the finish and finished with a surprising burst of speed over the last 100 yards or so.
All in all I was a little disappointed with my performance, but proud of the way that I got it back together and managed to finish fairly strong. On a kind of odd note, my average pace was exactly the same as the 10K I ran two weeks ago.
