Race Report: Shoreline Rotary 5K

This morning I ran the Celebrate Shoreline Rotary Run 5K. This is a small community 5K/10K run – I didn’t see any bib numbers in the 300′s. For those of you not familiar with Seattle geography, Shoreline is a sort of bedroom community just north of Seattle. I often play ultimate games on various fields in Shoreline.

The race was a mass start with the 10K runners lined up just in front of the 5K runners. The 5K route was the first half of the 10K route. I started near the front of the 5K runners and spent the first half kilometer passing the slower 10K runners. I say slower but they were still moving quickly especially considering they were going to run twice as far as I was. I loved that since the field was so small there were really no bunching issues like at the start of larger races. The course was marked by kilometers and miles. Because my goal was to run under 25 minutes I decided to pace myself by the kilometer markers. All I had to do was 5 sub 5 minute kilometers to make my goal. Plus the kilometer markers come faster than the miles so you get more feedback en route.

My splits were 4:41.49 / 4:44.00 / 4:50.64 / 4:44.28 / 4:55.08. If you add that all up my time was 23:56! Yippee!

That makes my average pace 7:42 min/mile or 4:47 min/km. I am thrilled with my result. It’s a full minute faster than my goal and I took 3 minutes and 39 seconds off my PB from last February. I guess all the miles and the speedwork and tempo runs are paying off.