The morning wasn't looking too great, foggy conditions when everyone was showing up, visibility was perhaps 1/4mile. Considering it was a straight out and straight back run, it was one of those "oh, I was hoping to see the turn around/finish line earlier than normal" kind of things. But, luckily the fog lifted minutes before the start of the race. Visibility went up and the turn around was visible from over a mile away, as was the finish line on the way back... maybe even at the point you turned around you could see the finish in the distance.

I took off a little too fast I think, but caught it fairly quickly. Started out with a 5:30 pace, which shot my HR up towards 155 pretty quickly. Luckily I caught it and started to back the pace off after .2 mile, backed it off to a 7:00 pace by .4 and then settled in at 6:45 for the remaining. (Average first mile pace was 6:37). I was thinking, wow, that's almost good enough for sub-20, but knowing my congestion from being sick I knew I couldn't go much faster than that. A little before the 1 mile mark I tucked up behind a guy who passed to draft since there was a slight headwind. He passed me slowly enough that I was confident in being able to stay with him with the advantage of him breaking the wind for me. By the end of mile 2 I had to pass him though because he had dropped off the pace a little. (Average pace for mile 2: 6:45). After the mile 2 marker I figured I was not making a sub 20, and reset my goal for a sub 21, figuring that was still within reach. Mile 3 started to hurt, I could feel the lactic acid building in my legs and I conscientiously had to keep telling me to keep my cadence high so I stayed on my toes and kept the pace. at mile 2.5 I knew my pace had dropped too much and I figured I might as well push it hard for the last little bit and slowly started increasing the pace again. (Average pace for mile 3: 6:57). By the last .1 I was at a 6:00/mile pace again finishing it out strong.

I did miss the sub 21, but all things consider I think it was great. I am still working towards beating my high school PR of 18:17, but considering my fastest 5k since I started running again a year ago was 22:01 (a month ago) and I beat that by a minute while being a little sick... I'm extremely happy with my performance. I think I'll easily be sub-20 by early-mid summer, maybe even sub 19 again if I'm lucky :)

Again, try not to go out quite as fast. Next time I need to do negative splits, but not by making the first half mile a 6minute/mile pace and the second half mile a 7minute/mile pace... it would be much better to just do an even 6:30 the first mile. Sometimes you just get caught up with everything though.

none, grabbed some water and went back to the last 100m to cheer on some other friends that would be coming in.


Being sick with a 100degree fever on Tuesday night and still having some throat issues from that. Not feeling at the top of my game, but I'm still very happy with my performance considering.


Overall RunDenver puts on a good race. It's just a 5k, so there's not that much to do, but they always have at least one aid station for the slower runners/walkers that will be out there for 35+minutes, which is good. I do wish they had recycling containers though for some of the post race water bottles and Mix1 bottles that are given away at the end. But overall, they are well organized every time. They always run out of shirts for those registering the day of, but make them available for pickup at a store the days following the race, which is a nice thing instead of saying "you're SOL". I'm sure by not purchasing tons of extras each time it helps save some money. Since it's for charity, that's a good thing.