Florida Five

My speedwork for this week was the Bridge of Lions 5K in St. Augustine Fl. My goal for the race was to go out a little slower than 18 min. pace and see if I could hang on in the heat and humidity and maybe even break 18. My first mile was 5:50, so right on target. And I was feeling shockingly good. Mile two was 5:49. Now I started to think about breaking 18 with a fast 3rd mile. I had started to feel a little pain a little after the 1/2way mark, which is pretty typical in a 5K for me. By mile 2 I was still ok. Finished mile 3 in 5:53. Hmm - definitely a slow down there and not a speed up but still looking at very low 18s. I crossed the finish line in 18:32 - so a good 20-25s slower than where I thought I was. What happened? Did I walk the last .1 mile? What happened was a major mismatch between my watch and the official distance, which is USATF certified. My final pace according to my watch was 5:50 but my pace according to a 5K distance was 5:58, an 8 sec/mile difference (the race results say 5:59 pace). My watch has never been more than 2s/mile off on a road race. Maybe I failed to run tangents although I was thinking about these. Look at the course:

That's a lot of turns. I gmap-pedometered the course using the automatic route finder and got 3.21 miles. I then did the manual gmap pedometer making sure to mark the tangents and got 3.15 miles. This all points to the importance of tangents on a turny course. Ah well. It's a race and we all ran the same course. I finished 14th T13th overall (thanks mom for noticing this) and 2nd master.

The course itself is ok. It starts at the very cool fort (the Castillo de San Marcos), crosses the Bridge of Lions, and then turns into the old Davis Shores neighborhood, which is a nice old neighborhood. The turns in the neighborhood are a bit excessive. And running a race in Florida in the summer is kinda stupid. Other than that, it was quite nice and I'll run it again if I happend to visit the padres in mid-July again.

Which reminds me, I'm in St. Augustine visiting my parents and sisters and their familias. My parents moved to St. Augustine Beach after my dad retired from UF in Gainesville. Here are my other runs from the week. No hill repeats this week!

All on the beach except my 14 mile concrete sidewalk run on Sunday.