This race was located only a few miles from the house in Sault Ste Marie, Mi. It started at 8pm. A few weeks before the race the head track coach at LSSU, Jason Davis, talked me into running this race. At that point I was just starting to run consistently. I like to do some small amount of running during cycling season to get the heart rate up and to shake the legs out in the mornings.
The weeks going into this race I was only running 15-25ish minutes at a decent pace. It was about three weeks of running low mileage and the week of the Chain Drive Fest I only ran a few days that week. I was only doing this race because it was a local race and it was something different from the mountain bike races. My roommate, friend from MTU, and the head track coach were all running this race so I figured it would be fun to run a random 5k during summer. Since cycling is my main focus and running is just something I do as cross training, my prep for these races weren't as serious. This past week I was realizing why I have been sleeping so much and have been unable to push the pace during workouts and last weekends mountain bike race. I have had friends in the past few years go through very similar things and after they got their blood tested it came back that they were anemic. So unknowing what was going on yet I didn't think the race was going to go well. I was just going to run it for fun
The morning of the race I got up at a normal time (7am) and went out for a short shake down run since I didn't run the two previous days because of work and feeling ill. My 12 minute shake down run was painful. My knee that has been hurting the past week was acting up and I just felt sluggish. After the run we all just chilled and took the day easy. Including a 2 hour nap after after lunch was a good way to stay relaxed. Once 6pm rolled around we left the house for the 4ish mile drive to Sherman Park. We all got our number and talked to some friends. Around 7pm we hooked up with Coach Davis to do a warm up. I was only planning an easy 15-20 minutes. We were all ready to go before the start. I was feeling decent. I didn't do any race prep like I usually do the week going into a race. I took some Hammer Endurolytes pills a few hours before the race like usual and that's about the only typical thing that I do. I wasn't even that hyped up for the race. I was in a relaxed, chill, uncaring mode and didn't really care what happened. I figured I could go sub 18 min.
We all lined up for the race on a tight start line. Like usual I started just off the front to hold myself back from getting out to hard. As the race started and turned onto the street I got into a solid pace and quickly started working my way up to the front. Coach Davis took the lead from the start and took off. I got myself into third and ran the heals on the second place runner. I ran with him for the first 1.5 miles as we swapped positions. My friend Zach wanted to hit an opening mile of 5:40 so as I passed the first mile I went through at 5:41. As the course hit some gravel road I slowed down my pace because of the slippery road. I wanted to keep a solid pace from mile 2 to 3. Once I got off the dirt section and back on the pavement I picked the pace back up. The entire race I had coach Davis in sight which was a surprise. I went through mile 2 at 11:30ish. I started to freak out about not breaking 18 minutes. Once I got back onto the final section of the course I started to open up my kick. At this point I was in 3rd overall but I knew a runner was closing in. The last mile I didn't even look at my watch so I had no clue what my estimated finish time would be. I ended up getting passed just before mile 3. As I made the turn for the final section of the course I had no clue what the time was. There were people blocking the clock so I was just guessing I would be in the high 17's. As I crossed the finish line I looked over at the clock and seen the time. The time on the clock was a huge surprise. It read 17:15. At first I thought the time was wrong because there was no way I ran that fast. I have never ran a 5k that fast and the last time I even came close to that time was when I ran a 17:18 two years ago the the Sault Ste. Marie Chamber Chase. I ended up finishing 4th overall and 2nd in the 19-29 age group. Zach finished 3rd on our age group as well.
It's stupid and funny how things work like this. I had little to no running time in before this race and didn't do any race prep stuff. I just went out and ran the race for fun and ended up taking 3 seconds off my pr. It's funny how this works. Ever since I graduated high school and after I stopped running at the college level my running has been somewhat minimal and since then I have broke my 5k pr 3 different times. 2 of theses times is when I put in a little amount of running in with no speed workouts. It makes a person think what I could be running if I stuck to the running gig.
Final remarks on this race: This was a fun blow off event that when going into it I wasn't expecting much but ended up to one of those epic races. Coach Davis killed it, Zach who has been training for marathons the past few years took time off of his 5k pr, Pj did some quality recruiting during the race, and I did something that I think that shouldn't be done. It was a great event that is low key and fun for a blow off race with no pressure. We all had a great time.
About a few weeks ago I had an idea of possibly running indoor and outdoor track for the final semesters of my college life. Its possibly in the works right now so if this is going to happen once Iceman is done I will be able to take the next month to get ready for the Indoor season and do who knows what. So putting up the time that I did for this race on the little amount of training was a good showing in front of the two coaches that I could possibly be running for this coming winter/spring.
Just a shout out to those who support me
Mom and Dad
Hammer Nutrition
Spy Optics
Schwalbe Tires
Crank Brothers
Breakaway Bicycles of Muskegon
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