Well at least 13 days. I woke up yesterday morning to cold weather conditions for the Rockets Run 5k in downtown Houston. Very different weather conditions than what we had for the Houston marathon on the 18th.
I packed 3 running shirts the night before the race to delay my decision on what to wear until I got downtown Saturday. After parking around 6:30 I walked to pickup my bib and packet. Based on the walk, I opted for the long sleeve shirt that I had packed; I pinned my bib to that shirt and had a powerbar in my car. I went out for a warmup run about 45 minutes before race time and found that the weather wasn't as cold as it initially seemed. I got a chuckle out of watching Houstonians trying to deal with a little cool weather; people appeared to be way overdressed. The rookie factor was also out there in force; that's one of the cool things about 5k's.... they draw a much wider audience than marathon and half marathon distances.
After my warm up run, I transferred the bib to a sleeveless shirt and headed out to the start line. Before heading downtown, I looked up the pace that I'd need to run to finish under 21:00. 6:45; only 6 seconds per mile faster than my 21:16 5k PR. I ran my first mile at that 6:45 pace but fell off for the last 2 miles. No sub 21 and no PR for me but I did run only my 3rd sub 22 and the first since 2007 so was pleased with my results. My 2nd mile was 7:08 and the last 1.1 7:40 for a 21:33 chip time.
Running a 5k after running a marathon is a really wierd feeling. The race was over so quick compared to the marathon distance. I look forward to running my first 10k in 5 years later this month; for some reason the 10k distance hasn't fit into my race schedule the past few years.
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