Recap of the Hot Chocolate 15k
Yesterday was a cold and windy day in Philadelphia, but it was definitely better than the 5 inches of snow that had been previously predicted - phew! The course was basically an out and back: starting at the Art Museum, up the Ben Franklin Parkway, then up and back MLK drive along the Schuylkill River (did I mention the wind coming off the river?). Not the most exciting of routes, but it is basically flat which is nice.
DH and I ran the 5k version last year, and found the organization in both instances to be very good. I suppose this race series is a well oiled machine given that it takes place in so many cities. There were a ton of corrals: A to H for the 5k, and I to T for the 15k. Others have touched on this before, and I also find their corral placement odd. If you submit a finish time, you get placed in a "preferred corral"...so something like I to N, with everyone else who does not submit a finish time placed behind that. But that means that some very fast people could be starting from the way back, or there could be walkers starting closer to the front, though the front corrals had signs saying "No walkers in this corral". They had a ton of pacer groups with everything from 7 min/mi to 15 min/mi spread throughout the back corrals, so you'd be running along at your 11 min/mi pace and then a bunch of ppl would come charging up in an 8:30/mi pace group and blow on by. Thankfully, the course was never too crowded.
The plan going in (after discussion with Coach DB) was to keep it around race pace until about mile 6, and then if things were feeling good, to kick it up a notch in the last 3 miles. All was going well, and although we were running into the wind on the way up the river, I figuratively felt like I had the wind at my back! I was able to run that last 5k with miles that began in 10:xx, which is huge for me.
I listed my goal here as 1:41. Current fitness predicted around 1:44:30, so anything better than that was going to be a great result! Technically it's a PR, b/c I've never done a 15k before.
Finish time was 1:42:08; avg pace of 10:58/mi! WOOOO!
Major thanks to Coach
@DopeyBadger for another solid training plan, sound pacing advice, and for helping me to continue to crush all sorts of goals!
Thanks for reading, and hope everyone is having a good weekend!