Run Report #2: Bulldog Breakaway Twilight Series 5k

Welcome to Run Report! This is where I document my running journey. Whether it’s workouts, races, or interesting stuff I learn, I cover it here. I’m not a professional runner, doctor, personal trainer, or anything other than a person who enjoys running. If you like this, check out my show!

Event Name: Bulldog Breakaway Twilight Series #2

Date: Thursday, June 13th, 2024

Location: Campus of The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina

Distance: 5k 

Background

I’m happy to say that reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated. My troublesome QL from last week slowly but surely stopped shouting at me as time went on. To help this out, I did some stretching, strengthening, and mobility work. Full disclosure: I could and should have done more. 

I ran my usual mileage throughout the week. The only significant difference was I slowed down a bit. This was the result of the time-tested scientific approach of listening to a podcast and immediately accepting the things you’ve heard as fact. It was about the benefits of every run-fluencers favorite training protocol, zone 2 training. I’m going to dive into the actual science at some point plus how it’s working for me, but I was sold on the stunningly common sense aspect of how running hard all the time can lead to injury. Unsurprisingly, this has been an issue of mine forever, and I had the greatest track and field coach of all time, Herbert Johnson, explain this concept to me over and over for a decade to no avail. Sorry, Coach. 

My body wasn’t the only thing that felt better. The temperature was about 10 degrees cooler than the previous week. It was still hot, but manageable. I knew I was guaranteed a better time based on this alone. Additionally, I made an adjustment to my race strategy. In my short 5k career, my strategy has been to run as hard as I can and hold on. An easy strategy to follow for a person who has struggled with pacing their entire life and often gets sucked into the adrenaline-fueled sprint that happens at the beginning of every race. In fact, some might say this is not a strategy at all.

My goal heading into this one was to not try to keep pace with everyone at the beginning of the race and to keep my mile splits more even than I did last race. If you recall, I got out way too quickly with a 7:18 first mile and dropped all the way to 8:45 for mile 3. This is a ridiculous variance. Now, I don’t have a good pace sense yet, so to stop from needing to glance at my watch every 30 seconds I decided to try to do this based on my rate of perceived exertion. I decided to try to stay at a 7 for the first mile and go from there. 

I finished this week’s warmup considerably less sweaty than last week’s and lined up at the starting line. 

The Race

When the gun went off, I did not. We have to run the first 500m around a track before getting onto the course, and I was going to use that time to find my 7. While I’m doing this, I’m also trying to figure out how I’m feeling. My body felt good, and most importantly, not nearly as hot as the previous week. The run felt significantly smoother. When my watch buzzed for mile 1, I looked down and saw 7:22. 4 seconds off my previous week’s pace, but that was a great sign because I had not expended nearly as much energy. My heart rate data confirms this too. At 131 BPM, my average HR was 16 beats slower than last week for mile 1. I felt so good that I made the decision to skip the first water station. My shorts remained dry.

Being familiar with the course now, I had a general idea of when the pain would come. Sure enough, just past the mile 2 marker, I felt a side stitch developing. A couple of things were working in my favor though. First, I had completed the second mile in 7:54. That was 25 seconds faster than the previous week’s mile 2, and my average HR was again 16 beats slower. Other than the side stitch, I felt like I still had plenty left in the tank. Secondly, nearly every time I’ve had a side stitch, I’ve been able to get rid of it relatively quickly by simply changing my breathing pattern. 

I got to work on that as I approached the water station again. This time, I took a bottle and dumped as much of it in and around my head and mouth as possible. As I was trying to figure out when to empty the tank, I noticed a runner in a yellow shirt ahead of me. The previous week, I had the same experience, and a thought popped into my head to try to pass them, but there was nothing inside of me that would allow my body to cooperate. My goal this week was to maintain my form and then see what I had left in the final 400m or so. I noticed Yellow Shirt Guy’s form starting to get ragged, but mine wasn’t feeling fantastic either. However, when my watch buzzed with my mile 3 time (8:09), I got a jolt of energy and passed him up pretty soon after. This means absolutely nothing to anybody except me. 

My final time was 24:27. That’s a 73-second improvement from the previous week, which, as I’ve explained to women and people interested in my plank PR, is a significant amount of time. I certainly believe it has to do with running smarter and the temperature being much better. With such little time from race to race, those will be the factors that will determine my times in the final two 5ks of this series, but I am looking forward to figuring out how to train smarter and sharing that as well. If I see significant improvements in my time in these final two races, I will disregard everything I just wrote and give all the credit to my new training regimen. Sorry, Coach.