Saturday, March 14, 2009

My first 5K



Well lets start out with the end of a story that most of you all ready know...

...The young bull runs as fast as he can down the hill, and ***** the first female he sees. The the old bull says, "why would I want to run, when I can walk down the hill and **** all of them?!"

All my life I have not liked running. I have been very slow at it. I dreaded field days in elementary, hated doing sprints in gym class. Hey, I even ran bases slow in baseball which was my passion growing up. But almost all of my running has revolved around short sprints, the fastest wins kind of running. So now that I am in my 30's, have had some success on my bikes, and decided that why not try a 5k next. All these thoughts came back to me - I hate running and have never been good at it!. But I have never been in shape or been training for anything physical before, especially endurance events until I started bike racing. So this is different, I am not a runner, but a 5k is not necessarily a "sprinters" event. With that in mind, my whole focus changed leading into this race. So like the story above, a 5K is not necessary who is the fastest, but who can maintain the longest, and conserve until the end.... so why would I want to run, when I can walk down the hill and **** all of them?"

Here were my goals for the day.

1. I wanted to have fun, and hang out with my boys on the TSB / Just Finish.com crew
2. Perfect cross training before I switch gears with my training to 100% on the bike
3. Gauge my fitness level for my training thus far
4. Podium? Was it possible?
5. Break 20 mins? Am I dreaming?
6. Break my old thoughts about me as a runner and do the absolute best race I could!

So Here I am, probably the best shape of my life lining up at the front of the starting line. The horn blows and were off. WOW, these people mean business. Right off the bat, my heart rate pegged and my stride instantly slowed down. About the first mile in I was able to recover and pick the pace back up. By now, the men and the boys were slowly separating to the freaks of nature, the fit, and the OMG hang on. I was in the front of the middle of these and doing well. I maintained a good even pace, with the help of my Bud Curt V. (thanks bro!) and turned the last corner into the final stretch. There were 2 guys only a few hundred yards ahead that past me early on. I tired to turn it up to catch them and actually started to real them in. But it was too much, If I pushed any harder I would have puked on the course. So I backed off and focused on just finishing within my limits. As I approached the finishing chute, I spotted the clock and saw the time as I crossed the line.

21:55!

I was very happy with this time. Later, I found out that this was good enough to snag 2nd place for men 30-34! My first running podium (of my life!)

In addition, TSB was well represented, and we had a great time! Todd P (2nd) Ben (1st beat me!) Paul (4th) Brian S. (6 in the 10 k Big Boy race) Jason (28 min time with no training) Lee (some where around 30 mins, and finished on pure desire!) and Curt V. (my bud 1st and did it just pushing me along in my race!)

GREAT DAY! AND GREAT JOB GUYS

4 comments:

Todd Shorkey said...

Awesome job John! I called it earlier - A top three finish. Kick Azz!!!

Neil said...

Amazing. For some reason that still isn't clear to me, my wife signed me up for a 5K last fall. Got my ass kicked.

cjsbike said...

Sweet!

I will stick to riding bikes!

My motto:

"Why run, when you can RIDE!"

Good job!

-Chad

TP said...

grooowwwwwlll!!!