Lee Foster Memorial 5 Miler

As I mentioned in my previous post, this race was to serve two purposes. To check out a half marathon pace and to determine my threshold heart rate. I arrived in St Marys an hour before the start so that gave me plenty of time to check-in, warm up and talk to a few other racers. I probably had too much time.

I warmed up with Ean King and it felt like the race had started already. We did a two mile warmup in about 14 minutes. At one point I looked at my watch and we were close to 6:30 pace! He was pushing it pretty good and even started dropping me. It was nice to chat with him and hear what he's been up to over the last 15 years. We were District IX rivals in cross and track while in high school. I don't think I ever lost to him in HS, but he always talked a good game.

Ean and another local high school rival, Andy Micheltree, were both at the race and posed a big threat in my age division. They both had beat me in May 2010 at a local 5k quite handily. I was back to running for just a few short months at the time.

The race was small (50-60) and started as expected with a few taking the lead from the gun, including Ean. Micheltree eventually passed me 1/2 mile into the race and stayed about 30 seconds ahead the whole way. I caught one guy (fellow 30-39er) at 1.5 and ran with him close to the turnaround. He wanted to run sub-31 so I thought we could work together. My splits on the way out were 6:11 and 6:16 en route to a 15:33 at the halfway point. Pretty much right where I wanted to be on this 'tempo run.'

After making the turn, I dropped my pace (and the guy I was with) to sub-6. I held a nice pace around 6 minutes per mile and I negative split the race going 15 flat for the final 2.5. I ended up 4 OA and 3rd AG. Most years my final time of 30:33 would have challenged for the win but not this year. I grabbed my 3rd place trophy early and headed for home.

While this course was fairly flat and the half mary course has some hills, I feel confident in my mile pace goal for the HM. I've got a few more weeks to keep logging the miles and adding some intervals and tempo runs. I'm happy with my progression back as well. I'm confident that I can continue to drop time on my pace and overall splits as I increase my mileage and intensity each year.

I'll save talk about my heart rate test and training zones for my next post.