Woot! Coogan's 2008!

I was looking forward to this race in terms of its progression in my training and as a comparison to the one and only other 5k I ran in my life which was ten years ago. That race was the super flat Wall St. 5k. I was triathlon training at the time and entered this race to get my first taste of competition. In that race, lacking any experience whatsoever, I went out entirely too fast running the first mile in 8 minutes and spending the remaining part of the race in complete agony and slowing down considerably. I ran that race in 27:05.

For Coogan's I felt better prepared both in terms of what to expect and in terms of my training. I have a Garmin 305 and was disappointed to learn it could not pick up a proper signal between all of the buildings. Thus my plan to pace myself accurately was thrown out the window. I would be relegated to just knowing my splits and my HR. I lined up about 10 minutes before the start in the front of the 9mm pace group. A few min before the start the groups seemed to compress but I think stayed relatively intact. As the gun goes off we start to approach the chip timing line for the official start. I think the time between the gun sounding and me passing through the start gate was perhaps 2 minutes, 3 tops.

I hit the start button on my watch and was off. Not having he benefit of actually pace I began to run clearly faster than my training runs but not uncomfortably so. I estimated at the time that I was running between 8:50 and 9:00mm pace. (My first split was actually 9:00). What became immediately annoying was the plethora of runners and walkers I was passing. Clearing a large number of people lined up in the 8mm and faster areas that should have been in the 9mm and slower areas. I might have burned 10 seconds running laterally just trying to get around people the first mile.

At mile marker 1 I hit my watch and saw my split was 9:00. (I didn't realize at the time that I hit start/stop instead of lap). About 3/4 into mile 1 a long (1/4mile) hill of reasonable steepness begins. I felt I held my own on the hill but with still little hill training under my belt they are hard for me. However, I think I might have discovered my strength. Often runners complain about running down hill because of the strain on their quads (muscles not often primarily used). I've always had well developed quads from hockey and various other sports and I think just genetically it’s my strongest feature. As such, I found that as I began the downhill run to start mile 2 entering Fort Tyron Park, I was flying so to speak. I was passing people left and right. The downhill for me was refreshing, recovering, and restful almost as it gave my legs a tremendous breather. There was no pain.

Going round the turnaround in Fort Tyron Park the half way point, begins another up hill, again hard for me and somewhat laborious. I'm still running strong and continue to fly again as we move downhill. As mile maker 3 approaches I look at my watch and finally realize that as I’m about to press lap I had previously stopped the timer to only record my first mile split. I hit it again to start to record the last 1.1 mile leg. (Later I could calculate my mile 2 split).

Pushing as hard as I can into the finish I stop my timer to see I had run the last 1.1 mile in 9 minute!! That’s 8.11 pace! Final race time was 26:37 with the following nice negative splits for a PR!

9:00
8:37
8:11
:49