OKC NYD Blastoff! 5K

5k

Race Report: OKC NYD Blastoff! 5K

Happy new year everyone!  I want to welcome everyone to my first race report for 2014; actually this is my first race report ever.  By 10 AM on January 1st, my first race of the year was now officially in the books.  Crisp, sunshine filled morning as I competed in OKC New Year’s Day 5K Blastoff, a local 5K race benefiting the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.  First, let’s discuss a few details about the race.  The course was very straight forward, essentially it was a rectangular loop with the start and finished located next to the Oklahoma City Memorial.  The temperature at start time was 36°, but with some brilliant sunshine the morning was beautiful.  The turnout was pretty good, 610 total participants, given that most folks were probably out pretty late the night before.  Plenty of quirky costumes were seen around too.  There were several women sporting boas and 2014 tiaras from the previous night no doubt.  I’ll have to remember to take more pictures to include those in my future race reports.  For some reason the race organizers selected purple as the “race color” and all I could think about was Barney from the kid’s show.  To the organizer credit they did provide an awesome long sleeve tech shirt.

As race time approached, we received instructions to assemble ourselves based on our per mile pace time.  I don’t think anyone was listening because that did really happen.  Just minutes before start time one of my friends, who is much faster than me, came  up to me, telling me how his just arrived.  I wished him luck, and noticed that he hadn’t taken the time strip off of his bid to place on his shoe.  I didn’t say anything, but totally should have.  I figured he’d done so many of these raced that he knew the chip would capture.  What do I know right…well more on that later.  My plan for this race was to go out hard, for me maybe a 6:00 min/mi pace and settle in after 1K.  This went according to plan; except that the cold air made my heaving lungs feel like I was going to have an asthma attack, and that I would probably be seeing the chicken and waffles I had for dinner on the pavement soon.  I settled into a 6:45 min/mi pace and my lung and esophagus decided to cooperate.  By the 3K mark, the course was heading back toward the start and into prolonged uphill with 15 mph head wind.  With this hopes for a PR (23:35 for me) were gone, and here my pace dropped to 8:25 min/mi.  I pushed through the rest of the race finishing at 24:45.  My friend was waiting for me, having finished in the 21st min.  We went to check our official placement, and to my surprise I placed for my age group (3rd).  This was a first for me, so I’ll take it.  When my friend checked his time, he got the dreaded, “not recorded”.  I felt so guilty about not telling him prior to the race.  He’s in a tougher age group than mine, but he still would have placed.  Sorry buddy!

So that was the first race of the season, which I would classify as a success.  We enjoyed black eye peas and hot chocolate, which was another nice touch by the race directors, and eventually headed for warmer environments.

Lessons learned:

1) Let someone know their timing chip isn’t going to record if it’s still strapped to their bib.

2) Try to stay in an “easy” age group as long as possible.

3) No chicken and waffles the night before a race

Categories: Race Reports

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