Annie picked me up at the office on Friday evening (I went in early so I could leave a little early) and we headed over to M&T Bank Stadium to pick up our race packets and check out the expo. The race organizers have improved the registration process every year and this year I think it went very smoothly...at least for us, of course. We got our shirts (pro: made from 100% recycled plastic, yet looks and feels like normal cloth...very cool; con: logo was minimal and it's the same color as the 2007 shirts) and wandered around the expo a little. We didn't buy anything, but the expo had grown in size and I would imagine that either next year or 2011 will have to be held in a bigger space (convention center would be a good space given that 20,000 runners ran a race this year.)
The next morning, e got up and hopped on the light rail, which runs right to Camden Yards and about 250 yards from the starting line of the 5K/marathon. Got warmed up and e were off right on time at 8:30 AM. There were nearly 2700 people running this race, so that added time to everybody's race, I think. The course was much the same as wwhen I ran it in 2007, although we made a few more turns up around Dolphin Street before turning onto Eutaw Street to head south back to the stadiums and finish line. About 1.75 miles of the course was heading uphill at some degree, with the steepest inclines coming in the first mile I would say.
I made a conscious effort to head out slowly, with the idea being that once we turned for home, I'd drop my pace and try to make up that time coming home. Good news is that I was able to do that. Unfortunately, there were so many runners that even the three lane streets of downtown Baltimore were clogged. So, I spent almost the entire race dodoging people and wweaving through traffic to pass people. I didn't even bother with the water stop, but had to again dodge people suddenly veering from the left side all the way to the right to grab water or Gatorade.
As we came down Eutaw Street, I picked up the pace and was pretty tired coming into Camden Yards, but kept going. I pushed hard over the final tenths of a mile and was practically sprinting when I crossed the finish line, which was good. I was totally spent and saw little purple blobs in my vision, so I take that as a good sign that I didn't leave too much out on the course.
I still didn't beat my 5K PR, but I think some of that was the slow start going uphill as wwell as the bobbing and weaving that I had to do throughout the 3.1 miles. I finished in the 33rd percentile overall and the 52nd percentile in my age group, which I take as a moral victory of sorts, considering that the winners of races tend to come from my age group.
Annie did well too, and cut another minute off her time, averaging 10 minutes per mile, which is great considering she just started running and it was pretty humid and warm outside for the race.
So, another great running weekend in the books and now it's training until the Cincinnati Thanksgiving Day Race in late November. I've mapped out my plan for increasing my mileage and long runs up to 6 miles by the time the race rolls around, so I'm confident I'll make it the full 10K. But in terms of beating that 5K PR, I think I'm going to have to find a small 5K sometime in the new year or even next spring so I don't have to worry about crowding on the course and can really focus on beating the time. We'll see; it's a work in progress.
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