I have not pub’d up this race like others, but tomorrow I am racing a low-key 5k in Brooklyn Sunday morning. Why “low key”? It’s a non-NYRR administered race which means it’s probably like 95% of weekend races found in communities all over the US. In other words, it’s unlikely to feature 8,000 participants like last weekend’s Healthy Kidney 10k featuring at least 20 world-class elites. Instead, there will probably be a few hundred weekend warriors looking to stay fit and check out, what I’m guessing, is a great view. On the edge of Brooklyn, under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge with a full view of the Statute of Liberty, Staten Island and Manhattan. I copped this pick from Google Images:
Anyway, it should be a fun experience in that (1) gets me out of the comfort zone of running in CP, (2) provides more racing experience and (3) requires zero recovery time. The forecast doesn’t look great (showers), but I hope to get in some distance after the race. Check back tomorrow for the race report.
I’m still experimenting with pre-race routines … really the day before routine. If I recall, for Coogan’s 5k in March, I hopped up the day before the race to do a race/walk survey of the course. I think I kind of tapered with easy workouts at the end of the week. Tapering has no place during the next couple of months of suffering … so I ran hard Thursday (5m tempo), off Friday and ran hard for a short distance this morning. I guess you can call it a shakeout + a few pick ups. The results:
| Miles | Time | Pace |
| 1.84 | 13:47 | 7:28 |
| 0.18 | 1:03 | 5:45 |
| 0.17 | 1:02 | 6:12 |
| 0.17 | 0:59 | 5:46 |
| 0.63 | 5:53 | 9:02 |
~3 miles. I went more aggressive than usual in the warm up in an effort to get used to pushing it from the jump. It kind of worked, but I still didn’t feel “loose” or “good” until the final 1 minute pick up or about 2.5 miles into the run. The pacing for each of the pick-ups was certainly much quicker than what I expect tomorrow, but I wanted to “feel” the effort. The takeaway from this morning was (and I’ve heard this repeatedly from teammates regarding a 5k) to get a good hard warm up before the race … hit the starting line boiling.
Goals tomorrow: Have fun and enjoy the scene. I’ve never been to this part of Brooklyn before and it looks picturesque. More specifically, I’d like to execute well (even splits w/ kick at the end) and get back to PR’ing after last weekend’s bleh effort … time to beat: Coogan’s 21:24 (6:56).
We’ll see what happens …