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5-Chaos PR

May 2, 2010 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: Humid, upper 70s

Comments:
Alexandria Running Festival 5k turned out to be ridiculously disorganized. Course was out and back on Eisenhower Avenue, where the facinating scenery includes the Beltway, an office park, an industrial park, a soulless prefabricated sub-development, and a rail-yard behind some bushes. Flat the whole way, except for the exciting Telegraph Road overpass 500m before the finish. Yeeeee-ah!

Pre-race: After a rather sleep-deprived week I got 12 hours of sleep Friday night, but only 6 hours of sleep Saturday night. Greasy Chinese food Saturday night was, in retrospect, a poor choice. Got up hour and half before race, ate a banana and bagel which I could feel hanging out in my esophagus right up until race time. Got in sufficient warm-up including striders, drills, and a 2-minutes race-pace cruise.

Race: Got out fast and then throttled back after 10 seconds, cruising up the Telegraph Rd. overpass. Ran the first mile according to the motto I'd come up with ahead of time "aggressive but smooth." When I passed what I guessed was the mile mark, told myself "let's go" (out loud, actually), and gave the pace a push. Glance at my watch at the turn-around, and saw that I was on pace for a 17:20 which was a good bit higher than I wanted. Didn't freak out, but did start upping the intensity even more. Continued to push hard in the third mile, especially as I saw what I'd decided to call the half-a-mile-to-go mark slide into view. Really turned in on as I approached the bridge, thinking (yes I'll admit it) about my awesome GDS kiddos and how I didn't want to disappoint them.

Lonely races can become haunted sometimes. For the last half mile I coulda sworn I heard someone breathing heavily only 20-30 meters back, though a part of knew it was almost certainly the sound of my own sweaty singlet hitting my back or perhaps even my own breathing. Still, I pretended it was real and that gave me enough motivation to continue picking up the pace as I neared the overpass. I faltered a couple times, but then kept getting up on my toes. The final sprint down the overpass and to the finish wasn't quite as glorious as I'd anticipated, but when I saw the clock hit 16:49 I knew I was really in trouble and blinder surged with everything I had left. Hit the mat at exactly 17:00, one second short of my goal... but then again, who know if the course was measured quite right. I figure now, I'd rather break 17:00 on a course I'm sure is legitimate rather than have a asterisk next to it in my mind. Nonetheless, I'm thrilled by my 25-second PR, the first PR in this event since since sophomore year of college!

Post-race: No one hanging out in the finish area seemed to have any authority or sense of what was going on. The awards ceremony for the 5k was supposed to be at 8am, but they decided to wait another hour till the half-marathoners crossed the line. When the awards ceremony finally came, they simply read out "In our 5k men's division, first place goes to Matthew Simonson of Washington, DC" (saying it first, instead of last), and handed me what turned out to by a gift certificate to Dick's Sport and Goods. No medal, no ribbon, not even a hand-shake from the cute 20-something news anchor who was reading off the awards! But then 94.7 Fresh FM came to the rescue. The DJ, who'd been standing around for 3 hours talking about nothing into a microphone, decided I was cool, took a photo with me, and offered me anything on their promotional table. I got the new Train album and a box of animal crackers. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!