My Run for Life 5k 2007

Last night I ran the Run for Life 5k in the Great Valley Corporate Center. This year was the 3rd annual running of the race individuals from our company. The first year our team placed 3rd, the second year we didn't have enough people for a team, and this year we set a record with the number of people running on our team (5... woo hoo!!).

As is probably apparent from my blog or lack there of, I haven't been training as consistently as I would like. I still have some lingering soreness from my ankle injury over two months ago. It may have been a better idea to take a month or two off of running to let the ankle heal up completely, and then get back into it. Who knows... maybe next injury I will take that tactic. but anyway, back to the race...

The course is quite hilly and I didn't expect any PRs out of my legs. The first two miles of the course are mostly downhill so I told one of my co-workers I would run the first mile at 6:15 with him and then ease off the pace and see what happens for the remainder of the race. The first mile came and went with a 6:13, followed by the second at 6:37... then the hills began. I slowed to a snail's pace and I believe the third mile was just under 8:00 pace. I was running in no-man's land for most of the race, so there isn't much to report. I finished with a time of around 21:13 (not official yet) and got around 26th place of around 230 people. For this course, I am pretty happy with the result. All the members of our team placed extremely well, everybody under 23 minutes, which was great. Sadly it wasn't quite fast enough for the team awards. We lost out again to the likes of Centocor, Vanguard, and Community Volunteers in Medicine (the recipient of the fund raising money). I am not sure of our team place, but we probably placed 4th or 5th.

Hopefully this race will lead into a great fall training season culminating with two successful races. The first is the 10k bridge run where I PR'ed last year with 42:11 and the second is a 5k to be determined (possibly the reindeer romp). My goal for the 10k is anything under 42:00 and the 5k is to break the seemingly unbreakable 20 minute plateau. I didn't get the 20 minute 5k this summer, but i think there is a chance by year's end.