Walt Stack Memorial 5K Race Report

Rickshaw · Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2005 7:44 pm

I had a good interval workout this morning: 1x5000m @ 5K race pace! :-)

I only started thinking about racing this weekend a couple of days ago, but when I saw this race advertised, I decided to give it a try and see how my fitness was progressing. With no taper or race preparation at all, I set off to tackle this 5K. I hoped I could set a new personal best (under 20:26), and maybe even come close to 20:00 if everything went perfectly.

The course was in San Francisco's Marina District, straight across the water from Alcatraz and the Golden Gate. It was a beautiful morning, except for a stiff wind blowing in off the water. Fortunately it was mostly a cross-wind, but the out-and-back course was slightly downwind in the first half, then slightly upwind in the second half. I decided to try to take it easy on the way out, knowing the wind would make the journey back tougher than normal.

During my warmups, my legs felt pretty dead, and I started to worry that I wasn't really ready to race. It was too late to back out now, though. At the horn, I set off with maybe 100-200 other runners. Right away I started to get that sinking feeling that comes with a very hard effort, where you suddenly want nothing more than to pull over to the side of the road and crawl into a ditch. I pushed my way through the marina and along the ocean-front trail, knowing I was off my goal pace by a bit, but not sure how much. There were no mile markers.

At the turn-around I was very surprised to see that my time was 9:59, seemingly on pace for a sub-20:00 finish, but I later discovered that the turn-around was not actually the half-way point! Struggling back into a bit of a headwind, I still managed to hold it together more-or-less, keeping pace with the runners around me. After the start I never passed anyone, nor was I ever passed except once near the end. Shortly before the finish, the route took a small detour around a parking lot, adding on an extra few hundred yards. Argh, too cruel!

I ended up finishing in 21:10, in 16th place overall. That's about a 6:49 average mile pace. I was a bit disappointed in the time: it's taken me a year and a half to lower my PR from 21:15 to 20:26, and suddenly I'm back at 21:10. I think the wind probably slowed me a little, though, and I also just wasn't in top race condition to run my best possible time. But regardless of my time, it was still fun, and hey-- I got another T-shirt!