8K Day!

So I ran the Philly 8K race today. The weather was pretty cold at first (45 degrees), but once I got going it was fine. The worst part of the morning was waiting in line at the portapotties. The line must have taken 25 minutes to get through. At least I wasn't doing the "gotta go" dance alone. The marathon and half marathon were scheduled to start at 7:00. They had a great announcer whipping everyone into a frenzy for the big start. The Rocky theme was blareing over the PA system. It was a really exciting scene. I'll tell you, those elite runners are incredible. They were like deer running across a field ... effortless and super fast.

So on to my start. There were maybe 2000 8K runners. Just a guess, I really don't know. (I just checked. The total finishers were 1281) Overall there were about 16,000 runners in all three events. I was just over a minute behind the official race clock by the time I crossed the start. It was still pretty congested, which made running at the pace I wanted to kinda tough. Needless to say, I might have been able to shave 30-45 seconds off my time, but we'll never know. The start of the race is a quick down and back around a circle at the end of the Ben Franklin parkway called Logan Circle. I was just 2 minutes into the race when the elite runners were passing me on their way back. BTW, the winning times for the 8K were 24:18 for men 26:18 and for the women. When I got to the 1 mile mark it was already past 10:00 on my watch and I got a little freaked that I had lost too much time in the pack at the start, so I turned it up a bit. My heart rate at this point was about 170, my normal rate for running. I started feeling pretty good by mile 2. Lungs working fine and only minor stiffness in the legs. I'm sure the stiffness was from not running for two weeks. The second turn around was just after 3 miles. In retrospect I wish I had paid attention to my splits, but my watch isn't that fancy and I wasn't paying that close of attention to it. I was a little tired by this point, but when you turn around and see the city in the distance it kinda motivated me to keep going. It was at this point that I picked out a pacer that was a little faster than me. She had overtaken me about a minute ago, so I made it my goal to real her in, or at least keep up with her. By mile 4 I had caught her and sighted another runner wearing a red shirt to chase. He was quite a ways ahead of me and I never caught him. Around 4.25 I switched to 2/2 breathing and my heart rate went to 190. I'm pretty tired by now. For the final quarter mile I was breathing once per step (1/1) and really digging in, but couldn't go that much faster. Final time was 45:25 on my chip. Not quite the 45 min time I wanted, but I'm happy with it. In retrospect I probably could have gone a little faster during the first two miles, but live and learn.

Here is the link to my race results: Results