Race Recap! Time Travel 5k - 1/28/24

Chip Time: 20:56

Place: 1st Woman / 2nd Overall

At the finish line in NE Metro Park, Pflugerville

Overall, I’ll call this race a B+ performance. The weather was fairly good (40’s, sunny) and the course was a pretty flat out and back in a metro park. A small race, it was easy to see my place from the beginning. I started near the front and, after a couple of 8-10 year olds who started out sprinting had faded, I passed the other woman up front and followed the leader for the rest of the race. The first mile benefited from that beginning-of-the-race-adrenaline and felt fairly good. The first half of the second mile sort of dragged as I waited to see the turnaround and I started to feel it the second half of that mile. The third mile my breathing was more of a struggle; I actually stopped for a (literal) second in the last quarter mile because I was dry heaving, but finished first woman and second overall.

This is the second time I’ve come first woman and in the top three overall at a smaller race. Looking back at both races, it’s clear that I was not concerned about my male competitors, only the females. Today, I think that cost me. The first place runner was never that far ahead; if I had pulled together a push at the beginning of the third mile, I possibly could have passed him. Instead, I was only thinking about how far behind me the second woman was. So, for next time, I want to work on being more aggressive and considering all of my competitors! 

On the bright side, this was a nice PR. I hadn’t run a 5k since 2021, when I ran 21:45, so I cut almost a minute off that time. This race was a bit of a rust buster, so I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do in a couple other shorter (5k/10k) races this winter and spring!