2017 Immaculata Nun Run 5K

Flat Race Over Rolling Hills

With three weeks after my Dawn to Dusk to Dawn 50K, I should be mostly recovered, but it still doesn't give me a lot of time to actually prepare for racing a 5K. Fortunately I run this primarily to support and give back to Immaculata University rather than race it for time. I fully expect to run another personal worst (PW) again this year.

Saturday morning started normally for a race day and with the race practically next door, I had plenty of time to eat breakfast, drink my coffee, and drive over to pick up my packet. Although we've had some decent weather recently, Saturday morning was drizzling rain with temperatures in the low 50s. After I picked up my packet and jogged back to my car, I continued my warm up. It was a day when a good warm up was an absolute necessity. Jogging an easy mile wouldn't suffice. It stopped raining during my warm up so I ditched my hat and jacket. It was a little cool still; I think I would have been fine but then they announced the start would be delayed because of the weather - to give people more time to get there. I don't think that was really necessary, and it meant extending my warm up a little to stay loose.

As usual with this race the start was disorganized. I think half the field didn't even realize the race started until they saw people ahead of them beginning to walk and run. This being typical I lined up a little more toward the front than I normally would. There was only 8 seconds between my gun time and chip time when I checked results afterward. The start is only as wide as the starting mat, maybe 12-15 ft. Despite that it was easy to be running as soon as I crossed the mat with the way the field was milling around seemingly in no hurry to race.

Since current time on a Garmin is pretty useless I tried to check my time after a tenth of a mile and again after .25 miles to get a sense of my pace. It looked like it was about 10:20 pace as we were heading downhill before crossing King Road. Immediately after crossing the road we head up the first of several hills in the first couple miles of the course. That slows me down some both because of the grade and because we are on a narrow sidewalk with a stroller ahead of me that runners either can't or are reluctant to pass. No big deal since I;m not powering up the hill anyway. Shortly after we reach the top we head back down then tackle the biggest hill on the course. We don't reach the mile split until after the bottom of the hill. The hill slowed me more than I realized with the first mile in 10:41. The second mile has most of the remaining hills, one shortly after the mile split, then two more shorter hills but with a little steeper grade. Either despite my hill training or because I may not be fully recovered from two hill workouts in the last 8 days, they took more out of me than anticipated. I had to concentrate not to ease relax and ease up. In spite of good intentions mile two was a little slower at 10:52. I'm on a flat section now with only two more hills to speak of, neither particularly demanding but hills none the less. After the first of these we sweep around to join the course just before descending the first hill on the course heading down to King Road with a little over a half mile to go.

This is where the race took a peculiar turn. As I'm picking up speed running downhill and intending to use my momentum as I cross King Road to get up the last hill on the course, the traffic control monitors are stopping the runners, not the cars! I've heard of course monitors misdirecting runners, courses being laid out incorrectly, even trains interrupting races because of scheduling snafus, but in 50 years of racing I have never been told to stop in the middle of a race so cars could continue. The only exception to that has been emergency vehicles. He held us there 600m from the finish for 25 seconds. When I complained he even threatened to take my number and have me disqualified to I crossed without his okay. That could have been an amusing scenario because when he called out my number to tell the other traffic officers to make note of it, he couldn't even read it correctly off my bib.

Eventually he let us go. As I'm running up the final hill at least one runner said she agreed with me, though no one else had raised a fuss. I pushed hard over the last section trying not to let all that affect me. Even with the break in momentum actual running time for the last mile was 10:27, my fastest of the race, so I did finish strong unlike last year. Final numbers were 33:38 gun time, 33:30 chip time, and 33:05 Garmin time since I had stopped it when we were held up at King Road. That placed me 157th of roughly 300-350 finishers, possibly more as stragglers were still coming in with on 273 finishers on the posted results to that point.

I did speak to the organizers about the incident, so hopefully they will be clear with the instructions next year. I wasn't in the mood to hang around for post-race festivities so I ran my cool down and went home.

That probably finishes up my short races for the year unless I add one in the fall after I recover from North Coast 24. This also serves for some speed work going in to the Laurel Highlands 50K in one week. Hills will be a big issue there as most of the vertical gain is in the first 11 miles and there is a cutoff time I have to make at 19.2 miles. It won't be a disaster if I miss the cutoff (I'm pretty confident I will make it comfortably), since the race will be a good tune up for my summer destination race, Powderface 21K in Alberta. After that everything is focused on my goal of 100K at North Coast 24.