Day 2,997: St. Patrick's Parade 5K -- PR??

When it's all said and done, I think I will be able to say this was a PR day for me, although not a personal record that will be seen as my official time. The official record will show that I PR'd this race by much more than I am likely capable.

Start with the last things first: I crossed the finish line of this Midtown race and was ecstatic. Not only did I do what I came to do (be one of the top 25 male runners who received an award) but my watch said 21:18, which would mean besting my PR by more than a minute, something that is pretty crazy once you think about it.

It took me a block or so of walking before I looked down at my watch again and it said "2.93 miles," well under the 3.1 miles that quantifies a 5K race. Hmmm.

The idea that the top 25 runners for men and women would receive awards is what drew me to this race. With the annual St. Patrick's Day 5K being held the next day, I felt the field in this race would be small.

The race started just on the east side of Peachtree Street on 12th, went down a screaming hill for .2 of a mile before joining Piedmont Road and then into Piedmont Park.

This pretty much is home course for me as anything. On Wednesday I even traced the course route with the double stroller, even dogging it up the huge 12th Street hill that is the start of the race.

As to be expected, people were flying down the hill. I was breathing pretty fast but just focused on running evenly. I passed some guy, he passed me and then I passed him. I passed another guy with grayish hair before getting into the park.

And that pretty much was the race order. Ahead or behind me, there were no changes (at least in how it affected me) the rest of the race.

The first mile turned out to be the only one that I saw that had a mile marker. I glanced down at the watch and, like the Atlanta Hawks Fast Break 5K that I did two weeks prior, it was another sub-7 mile at 6:47.

I didn't look at my watch the rest of the race until the end since I knew every turn and hill the rest of the way. I did all of my speed and strength training on this route for the marathon and it remains to be the main route (since it's pretty flat) when I am running kiddos in the double stroller.

I made some ground on the guy in front of me but mainly was using him to pull me into the finish chute, that's how brutal the final hill was.

In some ways, the course could have been 3.1 miles, especially since GPS watches are not always accurate (many times my watch says I have run more than the 5K distance in a race). 

But that means instead of me running what my watch data said was 6:47/7:23 and a projected 7:40 third mile for 2.93 miles or an average pace of 7:16/mile (which is very similar to what I did in the Hawks 5K), a 21:18 time over 3.1 miles is equivalent to a 6:52/mile race, which is something I have never done in my life.

It's ironic that the only two times in my nearly 30 years of running races in which my data has me short of the 5K mark for races involve St. Patrick's Day. The other time was a 2.67-mile course in the 2010 St. Patrick's Day "O'Highlands Jig and Jog" (the precursor to tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day 5K) but that involved the lead motorcycle missing a turn that would have added an extra .4 of a mile to the course.

If I extrapolate my speed near the end of the race, I probably can consider that I would have broken my PR of 22:20 for the .17 miles that are missing from my watch data. But I would have broken it by seconds instead of more than a minute.

I'll just have to let my training speak for myself and be confident that I likely can set a new PR in another race. And ignore the 21:18 time that likely will live on the Internet as my best 5K time.

Time: 10 a.m.

Temp: 48 degrees

Gear: Semi-technical T-shirt, short (Summerfest 5K 2013), Brooks Grit shorts, Skechers Go Run 3.