Run with Santa 5k

As I approach the taper week before my Seashore Nature Trail 50 in Virginia Beach, VA this upcoming Saturday, I decided to hit the Potomac River running Run with Santa 5k in Reston, VA.  As always with PR events, they are a class act and very organized.  Additionally, they draw some serious competition, everything from an Olympian to a College track stars to awesome high school XC runners.  Then there is me, some dude who played baseball in college and one year in the independant league - but hey I like to run and its fun, however, losing is not fun but I understand my limitations.  Driving there it was pouring and thought this is going to be a mess.  Figuring this would be pretty competitive, I knew placing would be far-fetched and I was correct.  Ran about 1 to 1.5 miles to warm up around 7:30am, hit the can two more times to empty out, pee'd another two times :) and then I am ready to go.  The course map for this race can be found here.  The first mistake I made was not line up close to the front - am I a fast runner.  Not really, but I usually do around a sub-six or right around 6 minute mile page on the first mile which means I am dodging little kids and strollers and all kinds of other crap to move around them.  So, I went outside the bounds of the race course and sprinted past most of these people - this was about .20 - .30  miles.  Note to self - get ahead of these people first.  Anyhey, the first part of the race had a small uphill and ran it in 6:31, yes, slow.  I was pissed and sort of gave up after that.  Knowing that I am running a 50k Saturday, I had sort of resigned to the fact I was just going to mail this one in so I really can't blame anyone but myself.  The second mile was 6:29 and the last was 6:39...all in all the total distance was 3.17 and I finished in 20:52 - a miserable time.  In all actuality, its 20 seconds off my PR but I knew I could of done alot better.  This type of mentality is not good but wanted to note it b/c I should never be in this frame of mind when racing.  I came in 73rd  out of 1,684 and 59th out of 681 in the mens group.  In my age group, I came in 9th, yes 9th...1/5 of the runners a head of me were men in my age group - what shitty luck...Either I am going to have to get better or assume PR events are going to kick my ass.  Both nic and zach ran and did great, way proud of them to run these races with Heather and I.  Here is a pic of nic finishing the 5k:

Additionally, here is big zach rolling in around the 31 minute mark:

Below is an ugly picture of me struggling across the line, by the site of the picture, its looks like I am about 2 months prego...now really, do I really look that bad when the chick next to me is chilling :)

All in all, it was a fun race and might do again but I am probably going to be moving on to run trails.  To get better at running 5k's, I will need to change how I train if I want to be sub-20 consistently.  In all actuality, I really didn't run this race that hard - aside from how it looks above.  I was actually talking with my buddy Scott during the 2 mile mark for a little bit.  Either way, I know I could of ran harder but to place, it would of taken me to drop 2 minutes off that time.  Not now, maybe if i focus on running these but am going to do middle distance trail runs starting in March.  Probably going to the Back Yard Burn EX2 adventure racing series.  Six days until my first ultramarathon <GULP>...