Mayor's Cup

The Mayor’s Cup 5K took off as scheduled this past Saturday. In keeping with tradition, I got a bit of a late start, arriving at the race site about 30 minutes before the start. It helped that I live about a five-minute drive from the race site. My pregame food consisted of a cup of coffee, half a bottle of Gatorade and a slice and a half of peanut butter toast.

It was a great day for a run—temperatures were right around 70 degrees at the 8 a.m. start. I’m learning to work a few sprints into my pre-race warmup, and I felt pretty good after a few of them, and my calf felt fine, as well.

The course was very flat—completely different from the race last year, at which I set a then-PR of 24:56. No hills in either case, but a whole new route that included the new Tuscaloosa Amphitheater.

The first mile seemed to take a long time, but it’s to be expected, since there were 800+ runners and therefore a lot of traffic. I settled down and ran an 8:30 first mile, which was the time shouted to me. I spent some time the night before hunting my Garmin 405, with no success, and didn’t have the sense to wear my stopwatch, so that’s what I went by.

I started to up the tempo a little, with a second mile of 7:45, or 16:15 as announced. This satisfied my need for numbers. I need numbers to crunch while I run—how fast I’m going, half-mile splits, etc. I’m the same way on long car trips—I need mileage signs to know how far until we stop for gas or whatever. I continued picking off runners, including the Tuscaloosa Chief of Police, much as I did at the previous race. I still remembered the feeling of losing a SMO to that guy the week before, so I was determined to not let that happen again. And it didn’t—I beat him by :40. Told you I was in better shape than he was.

So the route continued behind the amphitheater and back onto the complex. Men through the finish corral on the left, women on the left. I didn’t realize (until afterward) that the clock was on the right as I veered and focused to the left. I knew I’d just about red lined it and ran well, but didn’t know my time. Naturally, coworker Mike (who could outstare a can of Red Bull) immediately came up and asked me about my time. So then I turned around and saw the ticking red LED clock. Damn. A few days later, I learned my time was 24:53. Not as good as my 5K PR of 23:52, but I knew I’d run hard and run well, finishing 94th out of 800+. That averages out to about 8:18 per mile. And it also means I hammered out that last 1.1 mile in 7:37. That may well put me near a 7:00 mile, which I dare to say would be the fastest mile I’ve ever run.

I only got to hang around for a few minutes, since I had to open the running store at 9:30. So I headed home for a quick trip to the rain locker, the drive-thru and to work. And the nice thing about it all—no calf pain.