The finish line was 400 ft higher than the starting line. I climbed 381 steps to get there. Needless to say, I wasn’t shooting for a personal record in this race. 😉

The temp was a little chilly at the start of the Fineview Step-A-Thon 5K (probably about 45), but it rose 10 or 15 degrees before the end. Physical exertion helped warm me up, too. I made a mistake at the beginning of the race that’ll correct next year. There was a flat stretch at the beginning that was intended to separate the pack before folks ascended the first set of stairs. I paced myself as I would have for any other 5K, which got me stuck behind people that walked up the steps instead of running up them. Next year I’ll sprint the beginning so people can be stuck behind me instead. 😉

I finished in 29:06 (9:23 pace), which is better than my Run With HAART time, but nothing to get excited about. I was 6th out of 7 20-29 males and 47th out of 56 runners. On May 14, I’ll be in the Run for the Cure 5K and I’m shooting for a sub-26:00 (8:23 pace) time. My goal is to run a sub-8:00 mile at the Pittsylvania Mile Run on June 3.

9 AM. 36°. Sleet.

It wasn’t the coldest race I’ve run, but it wasn’t the warmest, either. 😉 This morning I ran the Run With HAART 5K in Schenley Park. It was one my favorite races thus far. I love any race that involves trails, but this was especiialy cool because it involved trails that I regularly train on. 🙂

Like I said, it was freakin’ cold, but not unbearable. The pre-race registration seemed well organized and the race started on time. I finished in 29:15, which gave me a mile pace of 9:26, and my heartrate averaged 180 and peaked at 195. That time’s in between my results for the Run Shadyside and Chamber Classic last year, and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s early in the season and I have plenty of time to improve before the Great Race. I finished 44rd out of 60 males in my age group and 110 out of 208 total participants (though some of them were walkers and skew the results a little).

After the race, ten-minute massages were available for free. Also, there was a raffle which I put $5 into. There were a lot of very nice gift certificates given out, as well as the 50-50 prize of $30. I won two $5 gift certificates to Subway and a $10 gift certificate to Allegro Hearth Bakery in Squirrel Hill. Due to the frigid weather, only a few people stuck around for the awards ceremony and raffle. Those who did were treated to humerous announcing by one of the organizers, made all the funnier by his ability to be goofy depsite how cold he obviously was. All-in-all, it was a fun race and I’d be happy to run again next year.

Today I ran my first 10K race. 🙂 It was the Richard S. Caliguiri Great Race.

I met up with Rob Carr at the ambulance behind the starting line. My wife took a picture of us. As soon as that roll of film gets developed, I'll post my Run Shadyside and Great Race pics.

Rob and I ran the first mile together. He was worried about his knee and I was worried about setting too fast a pace, so we took it slow. As it turned out, we took it slower than either of us really wanted (about 13 minutes as I recall). After the first mile, I split off from Rob and picked up my pace. Having looked at Rob's chip time, it seems I didn't out-pace him by much. I finished in 1:04:55 according to my watch (1:06:13, officially ) and he finished in 1:09:41. I probably put about a minute's distance between us when I left him and just held on to it, accumulating another minute of separation with each mile. Had I known Rob was going to be so close behind me, I'd have stayed with him so we could push and support each other. Oh well.

Anyhow, I didn't finish in under an hour like I wanted to, but I'm not too disappointed. I'm mostly glad I finished. That was the first time I ran 10K without stopping. During training, I always stopped at about 5K, got water and walked around a bit before running the remaining 5K. I have something to shoot for next year. Continue reading →