Bay Days 2006 Race Report

I ran the Bay Days 5 mile race again this year on July 4th. This is a 5 mile race in Bay Village, Ohio, so it’s totally flat. For some reason, it’s always hot in Ohio on July 4th!

Here’s my report.

My goal was to do it in under 40 minutes, maintaining a pace of under 8. I actually hoped to come in at 37:30 (pace of 7:30).

When I arrived at the race site, it started pouring rain. I carried an umbrella while I picked up my bib and went to the bath room. (nice thing about this race is that it is at a high school, and they let you go into the building to use real bathrooms!) It stopped raining so I put my umbrella back in my car.

This race just has one mass start and doesn’t use chip timing. I got in the pack a bit in front of the middle.

I didn’t have time to do a warm up run. I stretched a little while waiting for the race to start.

The gun went off and it took about 30 seconds for me to cross the start line. I hit my stopwatch at that point.

When I first started running, my left ITB was tight and hurt. Crap, that’s what I get for not warming up. After the hard rain it felt muggy. I struggled with the first mile, and crossed that mark at about 7:30. I slowed a bit because I didn’t think I could maintain that pace for much longer.

Then the sun came out, and it was HOT! There were only two water stops, one at 1.5 miles, and the other at 4.5 miles (i think). I kept wanting water all along the way and wished I had carried a bottle.

The whole race really felt like a struggle. When I was coming into the final stretch, about a quarter mile to go, my watch said 39:30. I knew I couldn’t run that far in under 30 seconds, and almost eased off my pace. Sometimes I think why bother contininuing with my hard effort when I know I’m not going to make my goal. But I kept running hard anyway and crossed the finish line with my watch saying 40:11. My official time was 40:58.9, pace of 8:12/M My place was 8 out of 28 in my age group, which is top 28%. Even though I didn’t quite make my goal, I’m happy with that result because I raced strong until the end.
I was exhausted the whole day and my thighs felt incredibly sore.

Last year I did the race in 55 minutes. It feels really good to see how a year of hard work has improved my results. 🙂