Bradleyville 5K: When certifications expire & 5Ks become less terrifying

I ran my first 5K of 2017 on May 6!  5Ks scare me more than marathons.  A marathon is comfortable at the beginning, but a 5K is hard from the first step!  I ran the Bradleyville Scholarship Run last year, so I also knew that the first half mile was all uphill, making this race even more intimidating than a normal 5K.  It's not a course you go to run fast on; it's a race you go to for prize money.  My daughter was really excited about running the kids mile, which she also ran last year; this puzzled me because her race was essentially a half mile uphill, a 180* turn, then a half mile downhill, but I tried to take a lesson from her and not fear the hill.

Pre-race!

I've been gradually getting back to feeling normal following a bout of bronchitis, and a track workout on May 2 showed me that I was getting there but not quite.  My main goal for the race was to net 2nd overall female (knowing a female I had no chance of beating was also racing), without worrying about my time.  This situation waivered a bit when I was laying in bed the night before the race and told Jon, "Maybe I can run an 18:20 at Bradleyville" (based on the 19:16 I'd run there in 2016 coming off an injury); Jon dismissed this and advised that I should just go for 2nd and 18:59.  The course is one to run by effort, because it's hilly the whole way (about 140 feet of gain); also in 2016 my Garmin had some issues in the remote location so I decided not to use it to pace.  Going by feel in a 5K is a scary and liberating feeling all at once, and I've learned that I tend to do better that way anyhow.

Elevation estimate

After the gun went off, I was quickly in second overall female position.  Initially there were many men around me, but as we pulled up on the 1 mile mark, I'd passed most of them and could see the runners ahead of me were (in order): a fast-looking guy, my coach, my coach's wife Kimi, a guy in a white singlet, and a guy who'd asked me at the start if I was going to "win again this year" (I redirected him to Kimi being last year's winner, and stated that she would win again this year but I was going to give it my all for 2nd!).  I caught and passed the starting line conversation guy shortly after the mile (course mile split of 5:54ish), then set my sights on white singlet guy, who wasn't that far ahead but seemed to be running strong.

Although this course is challenging elevation-wise, one thing I really like about it is that it's straight out and back.  That means no turning aside from a hair-pin turn at the halfway point, and I always run much better without turns; I seem to lose rhythm every time I turn and prefer to laser focus ahead.  After the turn-around, I continued to press towards white singlet guy the best I could, telling myself that he was going to run an 18:20 so I needed to stay on him or pass him.  I knew I had a solid 2nd from gauging the other females after the turn-around, so my main motivation was to get to the line as fast as I could.  We passed the course 2 mile in about 11:45.

We started passing 1 mile walkers in the last half mile of the race, and they were quite thick in places.  Running right behind white singlet guy was very helpful at that point, because he basically cleared a path for me and I didn't feel like I had to weave more than a couple of minor movements.  The plus side of that first half mile uphill is that you get to finish with a half mile downhill!  I kept telling myself just to stay on white singlet guy.  In the end, he finished 3rd overall male in 18:18.0, while I was 2nd overall female in 18:18.6.  The finishing clock was of no help with knowing this information (see photo below; the inflatable finish banner also didn't hold up, but you can see the beautiful Ozarks backdrop)!

10:32??

After doubling over from 5K pain for a moment, I found Albani and Jon to find out that she ran a 10:57 mile, off her last year's time of 10:03 but a solid effort (she's on the minimalist plan of weekly mileage of 2-3 miles a week for only a month).  I think the difference was that last year Jon ran with her to pace her, while this year she wanted to run alone and probably started out too fast with all of the other kids.  The mile started at the same time as my race so I didn't get to see her run, but Jon got some great pictures of her and the beautiful Ozarks backdrop!  She enjoyed her run (and her post-race soda!), and I love seeing her have fun running.  She was disappointed that she didn't win a trophy, but she also did not want mine. 

Perfect form!

Coming down the mountain

Pain cave face

Finishing shot

Technically, 18:18 is a 5K PR for me, bettering my previous PR of 18:25.  After the race, a few people were mentioning that they thought the course was a bit short.  Both this year and last, my Garmin hasn't seemed to pick up satellites very well out in the boondocks, so I didn't use it for pace (I used it as a stopwatch and took course splits).  I had data on it, but didn't think it was accurate.  Also, consistent with my Certified in '17 campaign, I thought the course was certified, and in fact I knew it had been because I'd looked it up on the USAT&F website before.  I had no cell phone service at the race or for most of the drive back, but as soon as we got back to civilization I pulled up the USAT&F website to double check the certification.  I came up with the certification map below, and the information that the certification was "expired."  This is the course we ran, so as long as the start/finish and turn-around were placed in the correct spots (the turn-around was spray painted on the road, so you'd think it was carried over from year to year), we ran an accurate course; but I was all kinds of second guessing myself and also disliked not having accurate Garmin data to base my conclusion off of.

Certification expired.

I basically came to the conclusion that I am going to strive to run a faster 5K this summer so that it doesn't even matter!  I don't really "claim" my 5K PR anyway since it's my weakest PR; although there is no doubt the 5K is my weakest distance, I'd be lying if I said I didn't really want to better my times in it!

Overall, I'm satisfied with this race and my effort.  I ran 58 seconds faster than I ran last year.  The first half mile uphill didn't seem quite as bad this time around, probably because I'm in better shape now.  I don't think I'll ever run the best 5K I can, because I don't think I'll ever train specifically for the 5K, but instead just try to ride on my half and full marathon fitness to gut them out.  Perhaps the best part of the day was that the race really wasn't as scary as I'd hyped it up in my head to be.  5Ks are tough, but so am I.  Plus, marathon pace should feel slow after running sub-6:00 pace, right?!!

Awards

Afterward we went to "Sucker Days" (a real thing) in Nixa!  Albani did all of the kids activities wearing her race number, which I loved.

Cuteness