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3rd Widener: The Passover 5k!

April 20, 2019 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
I've been waiting for this race all year. Was a bit nervous going in as a result, and felt really awful on the way over and before warmup. A nice jog at the beginning cooled my nerves, and I took a nice easy trip through my warmup routine to stay calm. Watched two men's 5ks while doing that, which got me motivated and upped the intensity–goats did super well.

I was seeded pretty far in the back of the slowest heat, but that wasn't really a concern for a race this long. My plan was to stick with Nathan for as long as possible, hoping he could drag me to a PR, and maybe even sub-17 if I got lucky. Nathan did all the work for the first mile, keeping us even: we went through in about 5:18 I think.

Pack started slowing down there, but I knew that for me, pushing that middle mile was going to be super important for getting that PR. I surged a bit to get past the slowing pack, and Nathan eventually took back over after a little bit. We went through the 3k together, me on Nathan's shoulder, in 10 flat–only two seconds slower than my 3k this winter–I chuckled to myself at how crazy that felt and good I felt to be running a 10 flat when that was so difficult just a couple months ago. We went through the second mile in about 5:22, and then Nathan pulled away from me.

I spent that last mile largely alone, picked off a few people, just focusing on keeping my stride short, relaxing my shoulders, and making sure to not decelerate. This is when I really used the cheering from goats who seemed to be all around the track to stick in this race in a meaningful way–I'm super lucky to have these guys around me–couldn't have raced like this without them. I felt like I was starting to fade with about 1200 to go, but I heard Anthony's words, "trust yourself here, trust yourself" loud and clear in my head. That really kept me going when I could've given in. I went with about 500 to go knowing that I was going to die eventually since I was running on fumes. I ran a 36 which felt strong but then rigged in a 37 for the final two 200s (73) which isn't bad at all, but know I can do better than that. At the end of the day, this was a super even race and I probably couldn't have done much better pacing than I did.

Overall, this is a huge improvement for me. I kind of can't believe I ran as far under 17 as I did. It seems crazy to me that since a few weeks ago, when I ran 17:18 at the time trial, I shaved off so much time. And since high school, even more: from 17:55 to 16:42, that's about a 1:13 off. Couldn't be happier with this.