No Excuses

Beautiful day in Sacramento for the No Excuses 5k. I had a decent warmup, we had a beautiful rendition of the national anthem, and Mayor Kevin Johnson gave us a warm welcome. The Kings desperately need a point guard more than we need a mayor, and even in his 40s, Johnson would be an upgrade at the position. Anyway, off we went.

On Friday I mentioned that race day adrenaline would improve my time, and boy, did it ever. But it was also my undoing. I covered the first mile in 7:31, which was faster than any single mile I ran in training for this race. I promised I would head for the puke threshold, and I did. The second mile was a 7:52.

Now I’ve covered two miles five seconds faster than any two training miles I’ve run. Unfortunately, there was still 1.1 to go. The funny thing is I didn’t feel myself slowing down. Though it was more of a struggle, I thought I was moving my legs just as fast. The watch doesn’t lie, though. My third mile was an 8:32, and my finishing kick didn’t improve on it (0:51).

Unofficial time – 24:46.

No word from Viper yet, but I have to think he beat this. I have no regrets, however. I chopped nearly 4 minutes off my 5k time in less than three weeks.

Once we both have official times, we’ll have the appropriate victory/concession blog posts. Thanks for following along. It was really a blast.

UPDATE: It’s official. 24:46.3. The results are listed by age-graded rankings, which made me 305th of 1057. My age-graded time was reduced to 21:40. But before you think old guys like me reap a rankings benefit from the age-grading system, let me clue you in. The age- and sex-grading lifted me past 35 faster runners, but lifted 75 slower runners past me.