Branson Firecracker 5000

Sometimes it may be best for me to jump into a race when I don't feel super fit, because it means I don't have high expectations. The older I get the faster I feel like I lose fitness and the slower it comes back, and I am still feeling those 5 weeks of very little running in April and May. But I've also been doing Summer of Speed training with my running buddies so a 5k seemed reasonable enough. Based on my workouts I figured I could run around 6:15 pace.

#jumpingjuly

I drove 30 minutes south to the Branson Firecracker 5000 with two of my running buddies, Paul and Sally. Paul has been running well and recently raced a mile in 5:03, so I expected a 17:30 from him. Sally recently moved to Springfield and she and I have been very close on workouts (see: one of the 25-year-olds I hang with on the track!), so I expected we'd be able to work together in the race. Sally told me she was going to key off of me since I've been pacing us well in workouts. I told her I made no guarantees about hitting a specific pace since I race by effort, but I felt confident I would not go out too fast.

There were a lot of teenagers in the race, so there was a lot of going out too fast happening by others! The race started in the middle of the Branson Landing on cobblestones, which I quickly learned the Vaporfly does not play nice with. After about 0.25 we got off of the cobblestones and into a parking lot. At that point Sally and I were together with about 10 women in front of us. They all looked like teenagers to me, so I felt pretty good about being top masters.

I settled in and looked ahead while staying in the correct effort zone. Sally tucked in right on my shoulder. Nothing too eventful happened for the first half of the race, though we learned where the course actually went (we'd try to run it for our warm up but failed). About halfway in, we really started pulling other women in. It made me push to pass, and Sally came along with me. Between about 1.5 and 2.5, we passed every woman within our sights except for one, and we were right on her tail. There were also a lot of men and boys around, so it wasn't always easy to get by people, especially when we ran on a weird little curvy trail that went behind a strip mall.

After we got off the narrow trail and onto the north Landing parking lot, I passed the woman we'd been near. I wasn't sure what place I was in at that point, but there were no more women in sight so I knew we wouldn't move up between there and the finish. With about 0.25 to go we got back on cobblestones and Sally passed me. I pushed with what I had but couldn't get her back, so she ended up finishing 2 seconds in front of me in second female, making me third. First woman was about a minute ahead of us. I knew I'd won masters but didn't know where I was at overall, and no one watching knew either - including our friend Paul who won male masters or Amy who run spectated and warmed up and cooled down with us.

1st male masters, youngster, 1st female masters

We had run a 4 mile warm up so set off on a 5 mile cool down to make it a 12+ mile day. We had a lot of stops during the cool down: shoe change, drinks, monitoring the awards time, getting awards, walking awards back to the car (that firework got heavy!), taking pictures, etc. The award for 1st masters was the same as 1st overall, which I appreciated. They gave me the masters award since it was better than 3rd overall, but in the results I'm listed as 3rd overall and taken out of masters. Although I still try to contend for overall wins (vs. masters wins), I was proud of myself to be in there with so many young 'uns in a 5k - of the top 9, everyone but me was age 17-25. Plus we all know that my 5k pace is also my 10k pace, which doesn't particularly bode well for the 5k, hah!

This race felt about like a 5k should (i.e., cardiac arrest), I ran about as expected (6:17 average), and I ran pretty even splits. I think I could have run a faster final mile without all of the turns, but of course everyone in the race had to deal with those. My pace was about what I expected and though I wish I'd have been able to pull more out in the final 0.25, I gave what I had. I also wish the course had been more accurate, but I went into the race doubting it would be correct (I was just hoping it would be short so I'd look sharper than I am, haha!).

My Strava activity is here - but Sally and I were right together until the final bit and I think her Garmin splits were more accurate at 6:21, 6:17, 6:21 (then she got me in the final 0.2 with 5:49 pace vs. my 5:56), because I don't think my mile 2 was actually much different than 1 and 3 like my watch read.

Results are here.

Representing rabbit!

We are all on the top of the podium here