Even worse, I could see this was true -- about a dozen people passed me at pretty furious paces as I approached the finish line.
Four months later, I can tell I'm a different runner. Today in the Be the Match 5K in Atlantic Station I ran aggressively at a good pace, even breaking free of a pretty congested and slow start. Near the end of the race I was sure there were about three guys who would outkick me but I outran each one to the finish.
My 23:06 finish is the fourth fastest 5K I've ever done, over maybe three dozen races. It was just six seconds from qualifying for Group A of the Peachtree Road Race.
(My Garmin data said I ran 3.26 miles, giving me outlandish pace splits of 7:06 an 6:58 in the second and third miles. I'm discounting this data, which is probably inaccurate because of skyscraper bounce in the area. Over 3.1 miles, a 23:06 finish is about 7:26/mile).
The race ended up being fairly flat as this version of the race eliminated the large hills up Northside and on 17th Street near IKEA.
That said, there were a lot of turns, especially at the end. I remember that I started to sprint after turning into the shopping district off of 17th Street only to learn that we still had to run two blocks, turn and run one block and then run two more blocks before turning to the finish.
Time: 8:04 a.m.
Temp: 52 degrees
Gear: Technical T-shirt, short (Doug Kessler 10K), shorts, Nike Air Pegasus+ 30/A.
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