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| I signed up for this race about 10 hours before it started and it turned out to be my third Masters win! |
In the end I decided to register for the Atlanta Running Festival 5K the night before and I made sure that I got out to the park a little before sunrise so I could take advantage of street parking. I walked my way over to the registration table and got my bib and shirt (I felt a little guilty getting a shirt because of my very late registration) and returned to the car. It was only about 48 degrees out but it felt cold. Cold enough that when I started my warmup I debated running the race in my Under Armour running jacket that I was wearing.
Luckily after that mile I warmed up and ditched the coat in my car. It was really convenient to be able to change shoes from trainers to racing shoes and even, about an hour before the race, driving home to use the bathroom instead of a porta-potty. When I returned some minutes later, my parking space was still available!
When I got to the starting area, I grimaced, since the one guy who looked like he would win the whole race (and he did), wearing one of those Tracksmith sash tanks, also was wearing the exact same white Nike Vaporfly 4% Flyknit as I was wearing. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones wearing Vaporflys to this event. I debated wearing other shoes but after last week's great run I decided to see how the shoe would run in this race.
When the race started, I made sure that my wattage was under 300 and I pretty much kept it this way.. We made our way around the Active Oval and during this time I caught up with a younger African-American guy. He kept surging to stay in front of me and at times I would drop back, especially up the hill on the Active Oval, to keep my wattage down. I wondered if the entire race would be this way, with this guy pacing me. Eventually after Mile 1 and before the turn into The Meadow, I dropped him.
In past races without the footpod I would run way too fast around the Active Oval and then get dropped by people in the Meadow, only to have my slowest mile be Mile 3. This time I was passing people, but carefully and once I made my way back out of The Meadow, I caught up with a guy in a Georgia shirt. We basically ran step by step the rest of the way back to the Active Oval where we had to loop back around it toward the start.
Here I started to disregard my wattage up and back down the hill around the oval. Once we made the turn along Lake Clara Meer, I started to pick it up a little bit, waiting for the last turn as I did in last December's Jeff Galloway 13.1. When the turn came, I made for the tangent as fast as I could and outkicked this guy -- who was 14 years younger than me -- by two seconds to finish in 21:45. I was 6th place overall and first Masters male (the overall winner was 47 so the Masters win fell to me).
I was elated when I saw the results. I was worried that with only awards for the top runners in each age division I would walk home without an award, as I did the previous week in the Leftovers 5K. It helped that the popular Eastside BeltLine 10K also was held today, just an hour or so after my race started.
The Masters win was unexpected and great -- I got an award and a gift card to Phidippides running store. It also was my third Masters win, after the May the 4th Miler Be With You race in May 2015 and the Stamp Out Poverty 5K in December 2016. It's certainly the first time I've won a gift card for a race.
I felt extremely comfortable running this distance at this pace and this time around I used the footpod data to tell me when to increase my wattage and I included pace to appear on the screen to give me a sense of what the actual pace was during the race. My splits were incredibly even -- 6:57/7:04/7:00 and the last .13 miles I was running at a 5:50/mile pace. It will be nice to use this tool in a ramp up for longer distances -- and new PRs.
Time: 8:30 a.m.
Temp: 48 degrees
Gear: Technical T-shirt, short (Doug Kessler 10K), shorts, Nike Vaporfly 4% Flyknit/B.
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