Tour de Pain- Part 2

The 5k which was part two of the Tour de Pain is finished, and another PR is had!

This piece of the race was the part I was most nervous about for sure. The other 2 distances were automatic PR's and while I have time goals for them, I feel the 4M and 1M races held a little less pressure. I would be coming off of tired legs this morning with less than a 12 hour turn-around, and hoping all my marathon training would be enough to help me set a PR.


My alarm went off at 5am, I got up, ate my new favorite pre-run breakfast: a peanut butter and banana waffle-wich. As I was getting all my things together and getting ready I was suprised how good my legs felt, it was as if I hadn't even raced last night. I think the stretch+foam roll+ ice combo did wonders- I can only imagine the benefit if I actually did that after every run.

I headed over to Mandarin where this race was, and arrived at 7am, it was already packed and people were out in full force warming-up. I quickly scrambled to finish putting myself together and did a solid 2 mile warm-up, my legs felt good, I threw in some pick ups to get in some turnover, and headed over to the start with about 5 minutes to go. I was super sweaty already, and the sun was starting to get higher. I am normally done with my long runs by 7:30, so starting at 7:30 was a little less than thrilling, but it wasn't as hot as it has been some mornings.

The gun went off, and I started off not looking at my watch and settling in to what felt like a good pace, I looked down a bit before the mile mark and saw it was at 8:17, a little faster than I had expected, but I was not going to slow down, I was laying it all out for this race.
Mile 1- 8:19


They actually had 2 water stations within mile 2, one was just after the 1 mile mark, and the other right before the 2 mile mark. I grabbed water only from the 2nd one, but the 1st one caused a traffic jam, and I lost my 8:15 pace, boo :( Somewhere in the middle of this mile my lungs started to burn again, but my legs felt great, they were handling the pace just fine. I told myself that if I could PR (beat 26:41) then I didn't have to do my cool-down miles since increasing my lactate threashold would be more valuable than junk miles at this point. So I kept going, hanging around an 8:30 pace, listening to my legs and not my lungs.

Mile 2- 8:30


The last mile there were several turns, and the road way narrowed causing some congestion, I found myself bobbing and weaving and hopping up on curbs and such to get around some people who were crashing. It felt good to be able to pass so many people in the last mile, and especially within the last half mile. I felt good going into the last .1 and knew I would have my PR, now I was going for sub-26:00

Mile 3- 8:28


As we made the left turn right past the 3 mile mark, towards the finish line, I saw 2 guys right in front of me and mission #1 was to pass them. The first guy was easy, but dude #2 put up a fight, he seemed to have some ego issues getting passed by a chick. I had no patience for ego this morning, so I just kicked it up, lengthened my stride and left dude #2 behind.

.11- :40 (6:12 pace) Garmin Lies! It felt more like 7:20ish pace

3.11 Miles - 25:59, 8:23 avg pace. I made the sub-26:00 goal by the skin of my teeth, but it counts!


Today they used chip timing, and my official time matched Garmin at 25:59, I love it when I do it right! IT feels great to have a new 5k PR and 2 PR's in 2 days, I had been on the hunt for that 25:xx 5k for months so it's nice to see the work pay off. I came home, stretched, rolled, iced, and then took Peachie out for a 2.5 mile run/walk. Even though I didn't need the cool-down, I was itching to run more, my legs felt that good! We kept it easy since it was hot by this point and did the 2.5 miles in about 35 minutes- pretty good for her short little legs.


I am off to keep my feet up and do this again this afternoon! I am hoping for anything sub-8:00 tonight, please pray for me!