Since "retiring" from triathlon after 10 years. I've brought my love back to the 5K distance primarily. Since Texas 70.3 I set my goals to primarily be ready to race some of the competitive running races next year, as of lately I've just been focused on my "base" for the rest of this year with small spices of things we'll call "stuff", and putting in some races to keep things fun and fresh.
Friday night I raced in what is known as the King Campbell Spectacular 2 Mile Time trial on the UT Tyler campus. I wish we had this race when I was a runner there. It was 3 laps around the intramural and soccer fields. It was like a criterium race for runners. You could see the whole race if you were spectating, which is very rare in running. Coach Bob lets us old Alumni runners come and be a part of the race to see who still has it. This was the first time in 10 years I've been able to make it back to race with the Alumni's since graduating, so I was really looking forward to it. I had no big expectations going into this and no idea of what to expect so this was my first "performance test" I've done since getting back into the running scene.
The race started off with most of us Alumni team in the back. I've never started in the back of a race before, but I think it went to my benefit and prevented me from taking out too quick as I got stuck in back at the start of the race and had to start working my way up progressively. Relatively, it was a slow build up that first mile as I was stuck behind a lot of guys. There were sharp turns around the intramural and soccer fields that slowed you down a little bit but overall it was still a fast course.
I wasn't looking at my pace on my watch but I heard the mile split "beep" at me. I was like oh crap, we've only been a mile and I'm ready to drop out. I went back later and saw I ran a 4:59 the first mile and I was in 15th place approximately at that time. With about a 1/2 mile to go and 3/4th of a lap left I was 12th place. I didn't have any goals really but as I went along I wanted to make top 10. I put in hard last 1/2 mile the best I could and caught two packs of runners to finish in 6th place, running the last mile in 5:13 and total time of 10:16.95 for the course. The winner ran a 9:55 from Jarvis Christian College and the first Alumni, Alex Wilson ran a 9:58 finishing 2nd. UT Tyler ended up winning the meet.
Praise the Lord, I ended up doing way much better than I ever expected to do here on the minimal running I've been doing for this. I actually ran just as fast as I was in college 10 years ago, maybe even faster if we were racing two milers back then. Hopefully, that's a good sign of things to come.
Thanks to support of my Wife Calley and thanks to Sherril Wade for coming out to help with Evan and take the pictures! This coming Friday night is the Braveheart Invitational 5K.
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