New Year's 5 Mile: A Winning Start to 2013

Mr K and I have stumbled into a little tradition of starting our New Year's Day with a race.  In 2011 we were excited to take part in the brand new New Year's Day Half held on 1/1/11 and last year we completed back-to-back half marathons at the New Year's Double.  This year we tried another local tradition, the New Year's 5 Mile held at Flagpole Hill near White Rock Lake.  The real beauty of this race is that it doesn't start until 10:00 am on New Year's Day so we were able to see 2013 in and then get a decent amount of sleep.

Shivering after the race

I spent the days leading up to the race sick with a yucky allergy induced cold, but I was determined to run (and run well) on New Year's Day.  The weather was cold for hanging around before and after the race, but terrific for running. Couple that with a smallish race field (approx 300 runners) and awards given five deep in each age bracket and I was ready to roll.  The distance just happened to be the same as my planned tempo run for the day so I set that as my goal pace.

While it was a small group, we still saw some great friends to start off 2013.  We saw Carolyn at the park chunking the ball with her overly energetic pup, Berrin.  Music Mary and her husband Keith were also running this race.  I was especially grateful that EW was manning the camera today because my fingers were a little too cold to operate the camera on my phone.

You never know where Carolyn will turn up!

I enjoyed this race because it took me through a section of paved trail that I had never seen before.  The course was an out and back with a loop at the turn around and was pretty and wooded.  The only issue was that the path was sometimes slick from mud and we frequently jumped off the sidewalk and ran in the grass for better footing. I planned to take this race as a training lesson and work on starting slower and picking up speed at the end.  I still took off a little bit faster than I should have, but I thought that I could maybe keep Mr K in my sights this time (umm...didn't happen).  I heard the labored breathing of some of the runners as they came around me in the first couple of miles and I told myself to hang in there because they would not be able to keep that pace the whole time. 

Once I got to mile four I knew that it was okay to give it all that I had to get to the finish with a nice negative split.  My patience paid off and I was able to pass some of the people that passed me early in the race.  I was keenly aware of anyone who looked like they might be in my age group and I tried to put them behind me.  I am proud of my splits and I think that I ran a solid race (8:10, 8:28, 8:23, 8:16, 8:08).  I thought that I was feeling better, but looking back I realized that I wasn't as well as I thought.  I am not sure now exactly how I pulled that off, but I do remember thinking that the pace felt harder to hold than it did during my usual tempo runs. 

We both collected some nice New Year's bling

Mr K and I shivered and shook while we waited for the awards to be announced and were thrilled when both of us took home a beautiful champagne flute.  He ran a speedy 39:23 which earned him 5th in his age group.  I ran 41:58 which was good enough for 2nd place (but far from 1st!).  It was an automatic PR for both of us as neither of us has run a 5 mile race before.

Afterwards we met up with a huge group of Frunners for a our newest New Year's tradition--a delicious lunch of dim sum and a lazy afternoon of hanging out.  I couldn't think of a better way to start the new year! 

(Thanks again to EW for sharing his pictures for this blog.  I really appreciate it!)