Race Report - Irish Runner 5 Mile 2011

On the 16th of July it was off to the Phoenix Park in Dublin for year another race.  This time it was a 5 mile race, my first every 5 mile race, so a guaranteed PR, something I love about running a distance for the first time.  It was also the first race in the Dublin City Marathon race series.

The weather was very windy and a cool 18º.  As i pulled up to park the race started coming down and combined with the winder it felt distinctly cooler than 18º.  A nice little warm up and it was into the coral for the start of the race.  There were three different starts and I chose the middle one for those who hoped to finish between 40 minutes and 45 minutes.  A month ago I had hope to run under 40 minutes but due to having a cold all week and not training as much as I should I set myself a target of 42 minutes 30 seconds.  It was freezing waiting for the start, but it wasn't too long a wait.

It was very crowded at the start as usual but it didn't take too long to spread out.  The first mile was straight into the wind with a slight incline but once that was over you turned around and the wind was at your back and you hit a gradual slope down hill.  I had my watch set to km, as it's what I'm used to and I was checking each km for time.  1st km was done in 5:16, good timing for 42:30.  The 2nd km was 5:05 and when I saw that I got thinking, maybe a sub 40 is not impossible.  I just needed to shave a couple of seconds off my current pace.  3km past by in 4:51 and I knew I had a good chance.  I was feeling good, my breathing was good and I felt I could keep this pace up.  I knew the next 4kms were on a downhill before we hit the last km which would be a tough uphill to cover all the down hill we had got and get us back to the finish line just beside where we started.  I knew if I put it all out there on the next 4km I could leave myself plenty of time for the hill.

The sun came out, the heat rose and the day began to turn nice.  I kept the pace up, it was nice to run down this hill as opposed to up it as I did in April.  4km down in 4:47, so half way through in 19:59, still on.  I really pushed myself over the next few kms.  5km in 4:32, 6km in 4:46 and 7km in 4:26 and then the hill struck.  It was tough and my legs were sluggish.  I actually felt for the first time in a race that I may vomit, but didn't.  I pushed up the hill willing myself to the finish line.  Afterwards i saw my heart rate peaked at 200, not so good.  I crossed the finish line with 8km in 4:55 and another 70m on top for good measure with a chip time of 38:58.  I was delighted.  In over 6300 runners a finish of 1177, great day out, looking forward to my next race.