Lavell Edwards Memorial Heart & Sole 5K
- Distance: 5K
- Place: 1st!
- Time: 16:48
Here we are at another fun race! It's been only a week since the Provo City 5K and my legs were still sore, but smooth enough for another race!
Mental Prep
I felt conflicted about this race for several reasons.
- I didn't feel completely recovered.
- I really want some more competition to push me to do better.
- I'm getting bored running races alone.
Because of this, I went into the race thinking I could take it a few ways.
- Just run with the person that happens to be the next fastest and totally destroy them at the finish.
- I've been wanting to see how fast I can run a mile in my current condition, so similar to (1), but totally kill the last mile at a 4:40 or something.
- Hope there is someone fast running that I can run with that can push me.
- Just run my best.
(3) didn't appear to be an option, and I didn't plan on (4) until about 30 minutes before the race, deciding that I didn't want to settle for less than my best.
The Race
It's tough to have the right mentality to run your best without someone there to push you. I felt mostly smooth during the race, and a little stiff from my recovering legs. I tried to push myself, but was running alone since the start. Coming around the last turn, I had a lot of juice left and ran a 3:49 mile pace for the last 200m. It felt exhilarating! I crossed the finish line and was totally ready to keep running and just keep moving.
Best of all: the race was measured correctly!!! This was the first of five 5K races that I've done that finally had the race measured within 10m of a 5K, rather than 0.1 or more miles off.
Awards
The awards were pretty cool. They gave me a BYU hat, medal, shirt, and 2 free tickets (including parking) to the first football game in August.
Runner's Corner Runners
As usual at a lot of community races, there was a group of runners from Runner's Corner. It was fun to interact with them. Maybe I'll try to make time to run with them sometime :).
Flo's Race!
There were a lot of fun activities that the BYU athletes were putting on for the kids. Flo won so many prizes from playing the games! I later challenged Flo to a race down some of the track. She had such a great time!
Strava Race Results
I use my Garmin watch to track my races and then they get uploaded to Strava for sharing.