Race Report: Ryka Iron Girl 5K
This morning I ran the Seattle Ryka Iron Girl 5K at Green Lake. This race was ideal for me because: (1) I’ve wanted to do an all female event for a while and (2) the start/finish line was literally less and a quarter mile from my new apartment!
Pre-race: I picked up my bib, timing chip, technical shirt and goody bag on Saturday morning. I always like to take advantage of day before packet pickup because lines stress me out on race morning. I woke up at 6 am on Sunday morning and had a breakfast of green tea and oats with brown sugar. The race was scheduled to start at 8 am so I left my apartment at 7:30 am and arrived at the race start at 7:33 am. I did a short warm-up jog some light stretching and then lined up for the start. My goal for this race was to go hard but I didn’t have a specific time goal. I lined up just ahead of the 8:00 min/mile sign.
The race: The 5K route took us clockwise around the inner loop of Green Lake starting and finishing near the community center with a little jaunt out into the parking lot by the bathhouse to tack on the extra mileage needed to bring the distance up to 5K. It’s a very flat course and I didn’t experience any congestion problems even though the path was still open to public use. I started out way too quick and by the half mile point I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain the pace for the whole race. I pulled it back a little after that but I still pushed very hard for the whole race. The last mile was particularly tough, but hey, I was racing, that’s how it should be! My splits were 7:26 / 7:44 / 7:41 / 0:29. Blazingly fast! PB fast! My chip time was 23:19. That’s a 7:30 min/mile or 4:40 min/km pace. A PB by 37 seconds over last year’s Shoreline 5K!
Post-race: I was really really pleased when I saw the clock as I crossed the finish line. The excitement of setting a new PB made up for the fact that my lungs were on fire at the finish line. That passed quickly though and I was able to enjoy the post-race festivities including an excellent buffet breakfast! Yummy! After breakfast I checkout out the race results and it looks like I finished 33rd overall for the 5K and I think 6th or 7th in my age group!
Of course once I got home I had to plug my new PB into several online race calculators. According The McMillan Running Calculator my 5K time is equivalent to a half marathon finish of 1:47:47. According to the Runner’s World Training Calculator the equivalent half marathon time is 1:47:04. I think these are a bit too optimistic for me but it’s nice to see!
Place overall (all females): 33/775 (95.7th percentile)
Place in age group (F2529): 7/133 (94.7th percentile)
Totals include walkers.