Just a brief interjection here: This morning I ran my fourth 5k, and I set a new PR at 27 minutes 30 seconds. I placed 64th overall out of 160, and 22nd out of 90 women. Third out of the 15 women in the 35-39 age group.
I did much better than I expected, given these four facts:
(1) It's my first race using the forefoot strike (aka Pose or Chi running, and often used by the barefoot running types, though I run in cross-country flats). You may remember that I took a running clinic last year in which I learned the new form.
(2) I haven't been training on pavement at all since I started forefoot striking. Only treadmill and indoor track.
(3) It didn't occur to me to sign up for the race until about 5 pm the evening before, when I was surfing around and discovered that one of my favorite small local races was scheduled for 8 am. (Just as an aside: I am so thrilled that I can just decide in the evening that I'm going to run a 5k the next morning. That rocks. I love the internet.)
(4) I forgot to eat breakfast.
For all those reasons, I went into it reminding myself that I didn't want to push too hard. Still, when I checked my stopwatch at the one-mile mark, I found that I'd run my fastest-ever first mile. Oops!
A couple quick takes:
-You know how they tell people not to worry about whether your gear looks like "real" running gear because nobody notices it? Lies, all lies. The man warming up next to me at the start said, "I see you've raced before. You're wearing flats."
-Just as they were telling us to get ready, the big purple inflatable START arch suddenly went flaccid and collapsed in front of us all. They had to delay the race a few minutes while the volunteers removed it. (It was back up again in time for me to cross it going the other way at the end)
-Also the first race that I tried listening to my iPod while I ran. Wonder what the people next to me were thinking when "The Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show came on and I suddenly blurted out, "Group sex group sex group sex."
– Oddest thing I noticed that I attribute to the forefoot strike: I felt physically more comfortable running uphill than running downhill, which is a first, believe me. I tried hard to work it.
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