Thursday, April 22, 2010

First race in 2010: 5km in 21:33 PB

Ráðhús Reykjavíkur - Reykjavik City Hall.Image via Wikipedia
It was a beautiful day to be the first day of summer. Typical, Icelandic style, 0 degrees with 4m/s northerly winds. My wife and daughter and her friend drove me to the venue and I had decided to run the race with my running shorts, had my track pants on. My wife on discovering that I was planning to run in my shorts thought I was crazy because it was pretty cold with the wind chill. I did not want to run with my winter tights because I always felt constricted in them. Never the less, I did not have my gloves or ear cap, just had my LSU hat. Got the bib, my number was 410. Warmed up by doing a couple of sprints up and down the start road next to the Reykjavik City Hall. Heard the sound of the start gun and started to sprint out right away. It was a long straight with a small uphill at the end of the strip, I was able to pass many people on the hills. As they say, your running strength is shown on the hills. Continued a pretty fast clip, completed the first km in 4:09 and then the hills started rolling in not long ones but many short ones and I could see that I was able to push myself quite a bit. I averaged about 4:20 according my own calculations looking at my Garmin 305. Another note that I thought was very interesting is how many kids were running the race on the 4th km, I was passed by a girl, she must have been 12... I just could not believe that she was doing such a good pace, but I caught up with her and many others in the hills and left on my trail. It was a memorable run...  Here is the official result of the 5km race held on April 22, 2010 in Reykjavik. I was 95th out of the 459 runners who finished the race. This was my first 5km race so it was pretty good result considering that I have never run one. I realized that I have a lot of gas left in me when I ran but for some reason I never pushed myself, I guess I need to be patient about improving. Before the run I set a goal of being able to run the race within 22 minutes and I achieved that goal... and I am happy about that. I had a milkshake at Metro (formerly McDonalds in Iceland) :). Now need to start preparation for the next race which is a half marathon the coming Saturday. Click on the image below to see the summary and splits of the race.

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