Today I ran the Big D Texas 5K. The 5K was held at Fair Park in Dallas and I almost didn’t make it on time. I left home and timed it so I would arrive at the race about an hour before the start. As luck would have it, the exit I had to take off the main highway was about 0.25 miles after 2 major highways merged and there was a major accident just beyond the exit so the cops were forcing 5 lanes of highway traffic to exit on the same exit I needed to take. Needless to say, it took me about 45 mins to travel the last half mile to get to the race. For a while I thought I wouldn’t make it.

I just made it with 5 mins to spare before the official start time, but luckily the race organizers were aware of the traffic problems and delayed all starts about 15 mins. That gave me sufficient time to get a warm-up in. My legs still felt tired and a bit rubbery. Those 2 40-mile weeks took a lot of out me.

My main goal for the race was to run under 30 mins. My last 5K was 30:11 and my recent 10K a month ago was a bit disappointing as I missed breaking an hour as I ran a 1:00:50.

My second goal was to really try and push hard. I wanted to start running at an 8:00 min/mile pace and take it from there.

The organization of the race was a bit of a mess. To begin with, the start wasn’t marked, and no one knew where the start was. Eventually an official showed up and pointed to a small 2-inch white dot on the ground and indicated the start was behind that dot! We had chips, but the race was not chip timed. It was gun-timed and the chips were only used to record the time at the end. There was no starting mat to run over. I ended up right in the front as that was where I happened to be when the official pointed to the starting dot and was about to start the race.

Being in the front, I started off a bit too fast. I think I must have run the first 0.25 miles at around a 7 min/mile pace. I managed to settle down though and I ended the first mile at a 7:54 min/mile pace. The rest was actually downhill from there. I ended up taking multiple walking breaks.

Despite the walking, I managed to finish in 27:52. I broke 30 mins! My splits were as follows:

Not quite the even or even negative-splits I would have liked to run, but overall, I’m happy with the result. I didn’t end the race with the feeling that I could have done better today. On a perfect day I think I could have done better, but with the stress of the traffic, the rushed warm-up and the tired legs from last week, I’m very happy.

I ended up placing 4th in my age group Based on the time of the 3rd place finisher, if I took one less walking break, I would have placed 3rd. In looking at the results from this 5K and the last one I ran. By later this year, I will be placing in my age group!!!