The Chances

The deed's been done... I've run my first 5k. Woo!

I had my alarm set this morning for 4:30am, and groggily got myself out of bed around 4:45. My wife and I actually got the kids out of bed and on the road by 5:15. We got to the Natomas (Truxel Road) IHOP by 6. Stay away from that IHOP, btw, for so many reasons it's just a terrible, terrible place. We would have gone elsewhere except my kids absolutely love IHOP, and I figured it'd be a good place for breakfast to fuel up for the day. It did the job.

We got over to the Sacramento Zoo around 7, which was the time I had wanted to get there to avoid having trouble finding a parking spot. We were in one of my favorite places to park over there, in front of the rock garden in Land Park. After finding out I didn't have to sign in or anything, we sort of hung around, waiting for the 5k to start.

There were a lot more people than the Zoo Zoom organizers had projected. Between the 5k and the 10k, their count was 3200. Even with that number, I saw one woman roaming around with #3381. For the record, I was #161.

Things didn't get started right at 8am. With the number of latecomers, we didn't actually start running until probably 8:10. This is where it gets a little strange. Fleet Feet Sports told me that with the chips you attach to your shoes, it keeps track of when you start and when you finish, so that even if you start 5 minutes after the starting gun, it goes by the time you cross the starting gate. I found out that this just wasn't the case. More about that in a minute.

They told everyone to make sure we were matched pace-wise with each other. They didn't want slower people in front of the faster people, slowing them down. Totally understandable, so rating myself, I was a little ways into the pack.

When they sounded the horn (no gun, hehe), we were off. I was walking at first, approaching the starting line, or at least what they said was the starting line (they had these two towers of balloons on either side of a white line that was painted across the street). As I crossed this line, I started both the timer in my HRM watch, and the timer on the GPS.

I quickly realized that where I was positioned was way too far back. I was running faster than most of the people around me, but also saw that other people had the same problem. Very quickly, the slower people started moving to the right, while the faster people moved to the left and passed them. I went with the faster people.

There were three people I had my eye on the whole time. The first one was this guy running much faster than me with a jogging stroller holding TRIPLETS. I couldn't help but think how much fun those kids were having. Then there was a couple in front of me that obviously the man was slowing down to keep up with the woman. After about a half-mile, he passed her up and for some strange reason, in my mind I decided he'd be my pace car. I thought, as long as he's just in front of me and not too far ahead, I'm doing well.

At Mile 1 they had a water station, which I thought would be BOTTLES, but no. They were cups, so it ended up being just a couple sips. The rest of the water ended up all over my shoulders. Hey, I'm lucky I was even able to grab the cup from the volunteer's hand. :)

The guy I planned to keep pace with was still as far ahead of me as he'd been before. I looked down at the GPS and it said my pace was 8:30. Cool! There was this band playing just for the runners, I thought that was a neat touch. Then we passed Mile 2 and another water station. Another good few sips.

At Mile 3, I saw the finish line and decided to speed up. As I did this, I passed the guy I had my eye on and kept going. Then I saw the clock: no, I thought, it can't be. Yup, it was.

As I crossed the finish line, I stopped the timers and knew I'd be somewhere around 27 minutes because of seeing the clock. Wha? My personal record (PR) was 28 minutes, this couldn't be right. I looked down at the HRM watch... 26:57. The GPS said 27:02.

I found my wife, and we headed into the zoo, where they had the times posted:

Place Name City Bib No Age Age Group Time Pace
251 Greg Chance Olivehurst CA 161 38 24 M 35-39 27:20.0 8:49/M

Not only did I beat my PR, I WHOMPED on it. I've been having trouble even breaking 29 minutes lately, and haven't even been close. I was almost a minute faster than my best! An 8:49 mile!

So I'm very happy. Sure I was only 251st overall and 24th in my age group. My original goal was only to finish in under 30 minutes.

About the strangeness about the start: I stopped my GPS at the finish line, but my distance was only 3.07 miles. So apparently Fleet Feet was wrong, they started timing exactly when the horn went off, which was .05 miles from where I thought the start was. What that also means is that if I had started farther forward, with the faster people, my time would have been even better.

The average pace listed by the GPS was an 8:46 mile. The official pace was 8:49, which is mighty close!

2008 Zoo Zoom 5k Overall Rankings
2008 Zoo Zoom 5k Age Group Rankings

And btw, I burned 313 calories.