My WC 5k #1

There is a summer 5k Series put on by the Chester County Running Store and the WC girls cross-country team. I have had a long term goal of breaking 20 minutes in a 5k, but haven't had a good 5k since April 2005, when I got a 20:24 at the clean air 5k. There are no marathons coming up for me this fall, so I am hoping this is the summer that 20 minutes falls. There are 7 races in the series, so I am hoping by number 7, i am a sub 20 5k-er.

There was some serious rain in the late afternoon, so I figured that the course would be a mess. But a quick warm-up before the race calmed those fears, because all the trails seemed quite runnable. Before the race, I learned from chatting with folks who had run the course before that the course was pretty hilly, which made me skeptical of this being the course to break 20 minutes. The race was maybe 80-100 people but people took the start pretty seriously. The course ended up being not as hilly as I expected, some rolling hills, but nothing ridiculous, and I felt pretty well paced the entire race. About halfway through my lungs started tightening up, which made me think back to my asthma attacks during soccer as a kid, but no attack every came. I missed all the mile markers, so I don't have any concrete results that I ran an even race, but it felt like I did, but I only passed/got passed by a couple people.

Overall, I finished in a somewhat disappointing 21:15 or so. Cutting 1:16 off a 5k time in two months may be a tough, but we will see. If I stick to my plan of intervals once a week, I think it can be done.