The Plan was simple on this pancake-flat course: go out a little under 7:00 the first 1/2, hold around 7:00 for the next two miles, then attempt to kick through the inevitable pain.

Normally I don't line up in the front, but my recent experience has been to get caught up in a ton of traffic at the beginning of races so this time I lined up about 5 rows back. This would allow me to get into my target pace almost immediately and not have to make it up later.

The first mile went as planned, settling into just over a 7-flat pace. My Garmin has fits going through the tall buildings in Harbor East and generally adds 0.1 miles for reasons I still can't figure out, so I planned for this discrepancy in my 0.5-mile autolap and mile markers on the course. I hit mile 1 at 7:09, a little slower than planned but I felt good. HR in the low 140s, stride nice and relaxed.

Mile two started to get a little harder as I tried to up the pace just a little. We approached a turn-around and I let my pace drop and eased through it, taking the welcome break. I built back up to 7 mpm again and it started getting tough. We went up a small false flat; only maybe 5-7 of climb but the HR started to spike a bit and crossed 150. I hit mile 2 at 14:12...right where I wanted to be.

Mile 3+. This HURT. I knew I needed about 6:55 the rest of the way to break 22, so I pushed. And strained. And thought how much this sucked. And thought how easy it would be to just let off and stride through. I just kept at it; the flat course helped. I just ticked off the minutes in my head...just 5 more, just 4 more, just 3 more...

Turned onto President Street and saw the mile 3 marker...it looked about a mile away. I just looked down and pushed through the pain, the coming nausea, the fatigue haze. My legs actually felt OK, or maybe they were just numb. :-)

I knew getting to mile 3 was the "end" of race; I know I can just turn my brain off for 200 yards (note: trying to work on doing this longer...), and I knew I had to be there around 21:10 (my race number, strangely) in order to get sub-22. As I approached it I accelerated to about 6:30 and got through it around 21:08: I'm going to make it!!!

At that point, I was done. I kicked but didn't throw down the hammer or anything...finished around a 6-flat pace. 21:55 chip time. Garmin read 3.2 miles but I know where that came from.

Splits were (kind of guessing a little to adjust for the Garmin):

Dist Time Pace Avg HR
0.5 3:28 6:56 130
1.0 3:36 7:12 140
1.5 3:35 7:10 145
2.0 3:36 7:12 147
2.5 3:32 7:04 150
3.0 3:24 6:48 152
kick :40 6:00 155
tot 21:55 7:04 145





Nothing...executed my race strategy perfectly and crushed my official 5K PR from last October by 45 seconds.

Came close to puking after the finish. RATS!!! Guess I didn't run hard enough. :-)

Jogged around a bit, sipped on some water. Drove home and hit the foam roller and rode the bike really easy for like 5 minutes.

What limited your ability to perform faster:

I'm carrying about 5-7 lbs more than I want to...but everything else went right. Training has been good, perfect race weather, well-executed race on a tailor-made PR course.

Event comments:

Charm City Run, as usual put on a great race for a great charity, ALS. The only complaint I would have is that the water station wasn't ready for the leaders to go through. For a 5K that probably didn't matter (though I could've used some out there...), but for a longer race that would be a big problem.

Decent t-shirt, great post-race food spread. No beer this time. :-(