Camp Harborview Harborthon 5k - 7/23

A friend of mine (a fellow Rush fanatic - one of the only people I've ever met and known who equals my level of fan-dom) lives in Quincy, and his wife works at Camp Harborview. It is an island in Boston harbor, and the camp gives at-risk kids a chance to attend summer camp. As a fund raiser, they held their first 5k race on the island today.

After taking a ferry ride to the island and getting registered, the race was off. For the first time, I was able to start off in the first 1/4 of the race participants, based on expected performance. This says less about my blazing pace, and says more about the fact that the race was limited in participants, had no race-day registration, and wasn't hugely promoted.

Either way, I decided to go at a HR of around 180 during the race. I knew from the Sons of Italy race that I could sustain that level of exertion for the entire distance. I didn't want to get much above that, because I've never trained for any real length of time with a HR above 180 - so going full tilt like that for 3 miles might be pushing it.

The measuring of the mile markers seemed fairly accurate in this race, which was nice. I noticed in the course description that it was a certified distance. In looking back at the Sons of Italy race, there was no such claim, and I recall that the first mile seemed short, and that the total distance was longer than the advertised 5 miles. So it seems like a certified designation might actually be reliable. For the first mile, I clocked in at 6:50 with a HR of 178. The second mile was the toughest - as I was not running on such readily available energy as the first mile, and it was before my system felt like it was getting into a groove. Not having run for 4 days may have contributed a little bit to that. Either way, the second mile clocked in at 7:04 with a HR of 181 (avg HR of 179 for the mile). For the third mile, either I forgot to hit the lap button as I passed the 3 mile sign, or there was no sign. So the only time I have is that last 1.1 miles, which came in at 8:55 with a HR of 172 (avg 181).

Total Distance: 3.1 miles
Total Time: 22:22
Avg HR: 176

So - the chains keep moving. The last two races before this were seeing a 7:30-7:40 min/mile pace, and now the times are starting to get below 7:20 min/mile - at least for short distances like 5k.

Oh, and that whole thing about running a race with limited field and no race day registration? Usually I'm in the back half of the pack for my age group. Today I finished 42 out of 460 or so participants, and 10 out of 68 in my age group. I think I'm learning what running smarter really means :)