
If you ever want to get up early in the morning and put on a ridiculous outfit, your local Shamrock Run is the place to do it.
I tell you, I had mixed feelings about doing today’s race. I haven’t done an organized race event in about a year and a half. So doing this one was just to “sign up for something” to get me excited about running again, and get back into the swing of things.
I had way more anxiety over this race than was rational. I actually woke up at 5am Saturday morning, thinking it was race day, freaked out that I didn’t set my alarm, didn’t lay out my clothes, didn’t prepare my breakfast, didn’t plan my commute, etc etc.
Then this morning I did the same thing. I woke early from an anxiety dream where again I woke up on time, but somehow took too long to get ready so I missed the race completely.
I kept telling myself (in normal waking hours) that this is just a 5K, piece of cake, nothing to worry about. Also, my plan was not to do any real specific training for this race, nor to have a goal. The goal was really to establish a baseline, see where I am at, if I were to just go out and run a 5K without much training. So with no real goal, there should have been so pressure. Why the anxiety?
I’ve been running about 20-25 miles per week, all at slow paces around 9-11 minutes per mile. The plan was to establish a base, do this 5K, then make a plan for my next race, which is a Half Marathon I’m signed up for May 19.
So here’s how it turned out.
I actually felt pretty good the whole run. The first half mile was really a test at how good I was at maneuvering through the crowd. After that it cleared up and I could run at a steady pace I wanted without any congestion. I ran at “comfortably hard” pace the whole time. I’ve always liked that description that most people use to explain “tempo”. It’s a nice pace to run at, actually. Pushing yourself but not pushing yourself.
The real race results are not posted yet from the event. By my Garmin my time was 25:17, a 8:08 pace overall.
1st mile 7:54
2nd mile 8:15
3rd mile 8:17
.1 mile 0:53
I feel pretty good about this. Since I didn’t know what to expect, that’s actually pretty easy to feel good about it. But I also think that I can now start putting in some more serious weekly mileage, and do some speed work, and would be able to attain an 8:00 pace for the Half.
So how about you? Did you do a Shamrock Run in your town?
Many cities all over the nation do Shamrock Runs.
It’s one of the best excuses to dress up in ridiculous green clothing.