Sea Dog 5K

August 18, 2013
Clearwater, FL

I headed up to Clearwater super early the morning of the race. It was a little over an hour drive. Normally I wouldn't drive so far for a 5K, but I was also going to be working, promoting the TriRock Clearwater race, so I figured why not!

I got to the race about an hour or so before start time. The race start was next to the Sea Dog Brewery, which was were packet pickup was. We had a big parking lot to park in, which was good, as it looked like this race was going to to have a lot of runners! I picked up my shirt and bib, then headed back to the car to relax a little and finish getting myself ready. I looked all over the car and through my purse, looking for my music player, but could not find it. It was going to be a quiet run. Thankfully, I had stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom, before getting to packet pickup. The lines for the Porta-potties were crazy long! I by-passed the lines and headed over to the start area. They had signs on the side with min miles posted. I put myself between the 8 and 9 min mile signs. I wish everyone would pay attention to these signs and line up accordingly! Everyone gathered on the road next to the brewery and soon we were off!

It was a pretty hot and humid morning, so going into the race, I wasn't expecting much. I started off with a pretty good pace and just decided to go with it for as long as I could. We ran down the street, then turned to the left, onto a 4 lane road. They had one lane closed off for the runners. We were on this road for a short bit, before turning left into a neighborhood. We hit the half-way point in the neighborhood. I was still feeling pretty good. Not overheated, which I worried about in this humidity. I started picking out runners just ahead of me and then trying to catch up to them. We finished our loop through the neighborhood before heading back out and back to the brewery. From looking at the race map, I knew we didn't finish were we started. We were going to have to run a loop through the parking lot, to the finish line. I'm glad I looked, that way I didn't start my final speedy push to early. I picked off one runner after another. Feeling strong. I made my way into the parking lot, made the left turn, then a quick right, followed by two more rights, before seeing the finish line and pushing forward to a strong finish. I knew when I saw my time on my watch (25:40) that I was somewhere close to my PR, so I got back to my car and looked it up on my phone. I missed a PR by less than 10 seconds! I wonder if I knew what my PR was going into this run, if I would have been able to push it just a little bit more to get that PR. Not sure. I feel like I gave it my all. And with these conditions, I feel like I DID PR! Going to work on speed over the next months and hope to get a great PR soon. :)

Official Chip time finish: 25:35