Finally! My 2015 race season has begun!

I signed up for the Achilles/Steamwhistle Brewery St. Patrick’s Day run because it was a 5K, it was early in the season without being during a period of time when it’s unbearably cold in Toronto and it was… a St. Patrick’s Day themed (and as I’ve already indicated, I overly enjoy that particular “holiday”) which means I got to wear my amazing neon green Adidas running pants with extreme pride!

Unfortunately, it was a really windy and cold morning. While it was only around freezing, the wind was so horrible that the windchill pushed the temperature down to about -6C. The wind was regularly blowing around 30km/h, with gusts up to 50km/h – it was highly, HIGHLY unpleasant.

It was a smaller race, around a thousand or so people, which makes for faster race times since you have to do a lot less weaving around people before you hit your pace. I wanted to think I’d bust out a new personal best, but I had some harsh realities in front of me: I wasn’t in nearly as good shape as I was last summer when I hit my running peak for speed, I was almost ten pounds heavier as well and while I had been training, I had mostly been “sorta training”. Some weeks I was doing great, and others I just completely fell off the wagon. The only thing I really had going for me was that I had been keeping up with weightlifting and that was going *really* well.

I found the race pattern oddly disorienting for whatever reason (I thought I was going south when we were really running east). Not that it mattered, it wasn’t hard to follow as it was a straight there and back type run. We exited Steamwhistle Brewery (where the start zone was) and ran our way up into the financial district. I don’t remember a lot of the run to be perfectly honest. I was so focused on keeping my pace consistent that I really didn’t look around much. Most of my scenery was watching the kilometers climb on my Garmin!

The last part of the race was incredibly windy. So much so that as I was crossing back over the bridge towards the last section of the race, the wind actually blew me two paces SIDEWAYS! Holy crap! I wasn’t feeling so awesome by the last 400 meters,  but I spotted my husband about a hundred meters from the finish line and it gave me that extra push to just freaking finish. What I was really happy about is that I couldn’t bring myself to sprint too much at the end of the race, which means I was pushing myself appropriately throughout the whole race. This was GOOD news because I wasn’t sure I wasn’t really sure I had been pacing myself properly.

I ended up clocking in at exactly 26:10:00. My jaw dropped when I saw my chip timing. Right down to the millisecond, that was EXACTLY my personal best race time from 2014 for a 5K. While I’m slightly annoyed that I didn’t manage to a least squeak in a SECOND faster, I’m rather floored that I managed to bust out my previous pb on the first race of the season! Since I’ve set myself a goal of hitting a sub 25 minute 5K this year, this bodes extremely well for the rest of the year – I just gotta keep at my training plan! (For reference, last year I managed to knock off 75 seconds between March and June, so I’m hoping that’s do-able again this year.)

5Ks don’t usually have medals since they’re considered a pretty easy race and the fees are usually quite a bit lower than longer races. However, we were provided a lovely bottlecap opener on a lanyard upon completing the race. Highly amusing! Steamwhistle Brewery then hosted an event inside their building after the race where racers got some beer (yeah, that wasn’t sitting well in my stomach afterwards…) and some seriously amazing chili.

All in all, a fun, simple run, although with a weird course map. I liked that it’s a smaller race, so I’ll probably continue to sign up for it in coming years.

Race Results

• Finish Time: 26:10
• Pace: 5:14 per kilometer
• Overall placement: 283/1129
• Age group placement (Female 30-39 years): 27/217
• Gender placement (F): 76/634