Run for Young 5K

Given that one of my goals for 2012 is to run a 19:XX 5K I decided to run the Run for Young 5K this past weekend to see what my starting point was before I start actually training!

I ran the Run for Young in 2010 and finished in 23:02 on a freezing cold day, so I knew what the course looked like and was prepared for the rolling hills of Hillsborough Street. The weather this year was much nicer (50F) and I managed to get downtown early enough to warm up for a couple of miles and do some stretching (something I very rarely manage to do before a race).

I set the Virtual Partner on my watch to 6:45 pace (which would be a finishing time of 20:58) just to help me track my pace as I really didn't think I was in good enough shape to break 21 minutes on the back of a couple of tempo runs @ 7:10 pace and one track workout. I also wore my foot pod so I could track my cadence as I was curious how well I would be able to maintain my form as I got tired towards the end of the race.

I didn't manage to weave my way to the front of the corral before the race started, so I was a little slow away from the start when the race started and had to navigate around some slower runners who just had to start at the front! The first mile seemed to take forever as we went down the hill on Edenton and then up the hill on to Hillsborough Street where we continued the slow climb to the turn around. I went through the first mile in 6:45 and felt pretty good. The second mile included a course change from 2010 where we now went around two roundabouts before heading back down Hillsborough Street. By the time we made it to the roundabouts, I was already beginning to feel the pace catching up with me and was spending more and more time focusing on my form.

My watch beeped for a 6:53 mile for mile 2 which I was really happy with as I had been working hard and would have been disheartened to see a 7:XX pop up. By this point I was part of a little group of about 5-7 runners that all appeared to be running around the same pace. Running in a group helped me through the next three quarters of a mile as I was struggling to maintain the pace and staying in or around the group became my focus. As we got to the downhill/uphill intersection of Hillsborough/Edenton, I relaxed as much as I could going up the hill and was surprised at how I wasn't left behind my the other runners who attacked the hill and just as the hill crested I kicked for the finish line with about 200 meters to go and managed to pass all of the other runners in the group to finish in 21:07. I had run mile 3 in 6:50 and the last .11 in 38 seconds.

I finished in my 5th age group and 46th overall.


The race seemed well organized with a good Police presence at the major intersections and plenty of High School students at the finish line to hand out refreshments. Precision Race Timing provided the timing and used their "disposable bib-chip timing" system (the same system that was used at the City of Oaks Marathon) and again came up short. The "check your time" system again wasn't working and when someone typed my bib number in for me, I was given a time of 20:37 which was 30 seconds off. I checked with some friends that were also running and they had received text messages with incorrect times as well. For some weird reason, only age group winners were given awards (not the usual top three in each age group) and the final results that were posted on line showed only the gun time and not the chip time.

I took a look at my cadence data and can see that my cadence gradually dropped throughout the race from a starting point of 100-101/minute in the first mile to 95-97/minute in the second mile and 94-96/minute in the third mile (I finished with 101-102/minute in the final kick for the finish line). This backs up my feeling that my form began to break down early in mile #2 and continued throughout the race as I struggled to maintain the pace. Regardless, running at 6:48/mile pace puts me at a great starting point for 2012 and my goal of 6:26/mile and a 19:XX finishing time.