Race Report: Library Race

My university has an annual running race to raise money for the library, but this is the first year I have done it. It sponsored by the president of the university, so the university mascot was there.

My friend Rachel from California said she wanted to do a fun race, so we decided to run in costume. I'm Benjamin Franklin and she is Frida Kahlo. We thought we could talk some other history faculty members into running in costume, but the two most likely prospects were out of town.

The race started and finished in different places, and was net downhill. The two main uphills were about 1/2 mile into the race and at the end. Rachel said she wanted to run with me, though I am much slower. My costume was fairly comfortable to run it except that I got hot--the temperature must have be around 60.

I said my goal was 11 minute miles. I'm just not as fast as I was a year ago, when I almost broke 30 minutes for a 5K. I went out pretty hard, counting on the long downhill in the middle of the course, and then tried to keep up my level of effort going downhill. Looking at my heart rate monitor results--

I did a good job of keeping a steady and intense level of effort. Maybe my max heartrate is higher than what I'm using--I could talk a few words at a time--but I'm already using 205 as my max, which was measured in a stress test and is awfully high for my age. I walked some uphills on the last mile--my mile splits were 10:57, 10:34 and 11:35. Rachel went ahead then waited for me to cross the finish line together.

I'm sore afterwards--my other two running races this year were 10 miles and 10K--I forget how hard 5K can be.

Results are up. I was 147th out of 152 in 34:16. The overall female winner was 48 years old and her time was 19:51.