Lake Merrit 5k March '09

After our rough 10k relay last month, I wanted another shot at a 5k PR, so Jesse and I decided to run the Oakland running club's monthly 5k this month.

I was all excited about finally getting a chance to get a good 5k in (I was recovering from being sick last time, and recovering from an injury the time before that), so the night before the race, I put together a special playlist, with just my very favorite running songs, and just the right number of songs to get me through the race. I even made mental note of which song would start about 2 minutes before I hoped to finish, so I'd know I was almost there and needed to kick it into high gear when that song started. I actually haven't worn my iPod to a race in quite awhile, but I decided if I was going to run with music I was going to have the perfect music.

Yesterday morning, we got to the race about 15 minutes before start time, grabbed our numbers, and headed toward the starting line. It was a bit chilly, and sporadically windy, so I decided to leave my long-sleeve half-zip top on. I put my iPod armband on underneath the long-sleeve top (there really is a point to all this iPod talk, I promise!), after setting it all up so I just needed to press the "play" button through my jacket when the race started.

Cut to the starting line ... the siren sounds, we start running, I start my watch, press "play" ... and the sweet opening notes of "Wunderkind" by Alanis Morissette start playing. I should note here that "Wunderkind" is NOT the same as "Let's Get it Started," by the Black-Eyed Peas ... which was SUPPOSED to be the first song on my playlist! So I manage to hit the "next" button through my jacket ... and on comes another sweet, quiet song. And then it dawns on me ... instead of the "5k" playlist, I've somehow managed to start my "cooldown" playlist, the one I listen to when I'm walking back to my house after a run. The one with all the relaxing, slow, quiet music. Awesome. And since I can't see my iPod, and I'm not willing to lose the time it would take to stop and take my jacket off and fix it, I'm just going to have to run my 5k to slow, relaxing music.

Anyway, silly music issues aside, it was a pretty uneventful race. Even while fumbling with my iPod, I managed to start too fast. Jesse knew this, and tried to slow me down, but I'm not sure how much good he did. We finished the first mile in 8:14, which is blazing fast for me.

At the beginning of the second mile, we got our first nasty few minutes of wind. Gotta love that feeling when you're running as hard as you can, and don't feel like you're making any forward progress, huh? We got another one somewhere around the beginning of the third mile, but other than that the weather was pretty good.

We ended up finishing in 26:38, which was a definite improvement over my previous 5k PR of 27:12! I was pretty pleased, though I'd be lying if I wasn't immediately figuring how much I faster I could get before I run another 5k. I do still need to work on pacing ... after that first mile of 8:14, I ran the second in 8:41, and the last 1.1 at an 8:49 pace. Some of that was due to wind, but I can't blame it all on wind. It was definitely nice having Jesse with me--it was a pretty easy pace for him, but I think my pace would have been more erratic without him there.