First 5K run!
I ran my first 5K run last weekend - May 17 2008. It was the “Bound Around the Sound” at Sherwood Island park in Westport. I entered almost on a whim - I’ve been running 3x a week for months, but not training hard - but I did well! 28 minutes, 45 seconds; roughly 9:15 per mile (a 5 kilometers is just over 3 miles.)
My goal was to finish non-stop, without resting or walking - and I did. I even passed quite a few people on the hills, since my daily route has a lot of hills.
I placed 31st out of 71 finishers (15th out of 19 finishers among Men 30 - 39). The first three finishers in each class get trophies, but I wasn’t even close (the fastest 30 something finished in 17:10.) I did win a cookbook in the raffle though.
My official time was a little longer than what I saw on the clock when I crossed the finish, probably due to the timekeeping method - at the finish line the volunteers take a tag with your bib # from your racing bib and put it on kind of a keyring. They then either mark the tags with the current clock time, or put markers on the keyring corresponding to the time - not sure, I was too tired to be interested when I crossed the finish line. But a traffic jam at the finish line could affect the timekeeping.
Drama: The first runners across the finish line were not the winners. Apparently they took a wrong turn, and cut some distance off the course. Their times were adjusted to make up for the accidental shortcut. (I’m not sure if they were asked to re-run the missed distance, or if a single runner’s time on that distance was used.)
The race results are posted online: http://www.clubct.org/Results/08Results/08BoundRes.html#9
So I had a great time, wasn’t even too sore the next day - this is definitely something I want to do again, and I know I can improve my time a lot. My reward for finishing is a Fresca Burrito from the diner (Beans, eggs, cheese, and potatoes in a wrap.)