M.O.M.'s 5K 2010: Race Report

I would have done this report much sooner, but I've been waiting for picts to be posted. Unfortunately, it looks like this race didn't have a photographer. I've found these, but there don't seem to be any of me. So you'll just have to imagine what I look like. ;)

I love Mother's Day races. I try to do one every year (or cheer one on if I've, say, just done a half ironman). It just seems like such a great way to celebrate moms. I've never run a 5K with my mom (though I would LOVE to), but since I don't usually get to see my mom on mother's day, I enjoy having that small time to myself to think about my mom.

I started the tradition many years ago (maybe 8 actually) with the M.O.M.'s run in Davis Square. This race is organized by my local massage therapist, and it's always got a great feel to it, very family-friendly, lots of people hanging out for the raffle, Red Bones BBQ and free beer after the race.

This year was a gorgeous day, sunny and bright, but ridiculously windy and around 50 degrees. This makes for a mentally tough race. I got to the start (roughly 4 minutes walk from my house) with about 30 minutes to spare and got my number and bag. I waited til about 10 minutes til the start to go out to warm up. I didn't want to get warm and then cold again. I went for a very short warm up (maybe half a mile) focused on having good form.

Ok, I was feeling ready. I haven't run a 5K since the PR I set in March. I wanted a good time, but I wasn't expecting a new PR. I had done a 3 hour brick the previous day, so I wouldn't say my legs were exactly fresh, and I had 4 hours of riding to pull off after this race. I decided to just run to feel good, and if I felt good, to push it.

There's no chips for the race, so I trust my watch time, more so than the official time. It took a bit of time to get the pack moving to cross the start line. Almost immediately, my left shoe came untied. Ugh, why couldn't it have come undone during the warm up. Isn't that what it's for? To stop or not to stop? Well at this point, I still had 3 miles to go. Seemed like the 10 seconds I would lose to tie it, would be much better than taking a spill. So I took a look up at the people just ahead of me to get a sense of where I was in the pack, and I pulled to the side to retie.

To my surprise, it didn't take much time to catch back up. I saw Brenda who trains with my team and had recently finished the Boston Marathon. In fact I think this was her first run since then, and it was the day after her birthday, so the reality is, she's a much faster runner than I am, but given circumstances I caught her. We chatted a little bit, then pushed eachother. And finally, I dropped her.

The course was a bit different to years prior. We run up highland and back down summer. This means that there are essentially two hills instead of the one (up summer, down elm) of previous years. I made the turn onto vinal for the first downhill, and it felt great, but I got passed back by another girl I had just passed. This would never do. As we turned onto Summer, just passed the halfway mark, I passed her back.

I set my sights on a few people ahead of me for the uphill, but they were pretty consistent. A few runners I closed in on, but then could never catch. That hill on Summer was pretty lonely. Just coming over the top I finally passed one of them. Now we were into the last half mile, and I just wanted to be done. But I was also running into the wind now. I tried to put on the last of what I had left and caught two more people on the way to the finish line, but came in with an official time of 24:03.

It was a little disappointing to see the clock tick over to the 24th minute since my last race was solidly in the 23s. But my watch had me timed at 23:52, which I think was more accurate. And that gave me 14 seconds slower than my last race. Now if we account for the tying of the shoe, and the hills (the last race was nearly dead flat), it actually seems like a race I was pretty on par with. I came in 6 out of 63 in my age group (12 seconds behind 5th place, 17 out of 4th, and nearly a minute out of 3rd), 82nd overall out of 360. A little better than I'd fared at the last race (6/68 and 121/460).

Overall, a very promising race. Hopefully, with a little luck on the injury front, I'll be able to keep pulling down this sort of race.