The Vibha 5K Race – Sep 14,2008

I ran my first 5K race today. It was "The Dream Mile" organized by "Vibha" , the children's non-profit organization (http://wiki.vibha.org/Dream_Mile_08:Dallas_Home). Having run 13 miles yesterday, I was not sure if I will be even able to do this. I woke up very late in the morning (6:45 am) and the race was at 8:00 am. I was still debating whether to do this or not but finally decided to give it a shot. I reached the location for the race, Whitewater lake, at 7:55 am. Since I found parking a little away from the race spot, I ran to the race location to make it on time. This warmed me up a little and I was ready for the race by the time I reached there. Then registered for the race and was in the race line just in time. The race started at 8:05 am. I thought I will try to do it in less than 28 minutes since that was my best time running a continuous 3 miles in my tempo runs.

May be I was super charged up for my first race, I finished the first mile in a little under 8 minutes ! But I was also super exhausted after running the first mile. I slowed down a bit for the second mile and found that I finished the second mile in about 9 minutes. By this time, I was really exhausted and had another 1.125 miles to go (5K = 5000 meters = 3.125 miles. I totally lost momemtum after about 2.3 miles and started walking for about a minute L , this was bad pacing from me. I started jogging again for the next half mile. At about 2.8 miles, I packed all the energy I had and started sprinting to the finish line. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had finished my first 5K run in 26minutes and 20 seconds, that's a little over 8.5 minutes per mile. I was placed 11^th overall and 5^th in my age category. Not bad for the first race in my entire lifeJ. I will try to do a self timed 5K's over the coming weeks to see if I am improving. I would like to bring the time down to 24 minutes over the next 2 months.

A good friend of mine ( also a Asha marathon runner), Goutham (http://gouthamruns.blogspot.com) won the overall 10k race ! Congratulations Goutham !