Fort Worth Turkey Trot: I won my age group

I didn't know what kind of time I had in the tank before toeing the line for the Fort Worth Turkey Trot Thursday morning. A day earlier, I'd signed up to do both races: A 5K at 8 a.m. and a 10k at 9 a.m. I had heard there were hills on the 10k course, so my plan was to try to run the 5K as fast as I could then use the 10k as a way to get some miles in.

While warming up for the 5k, I felt really light on my feet and felt like I could get close to or maybe even beat my 5K PR of 21:01 set this past Oct. 18 at the Valley Ranch Pumpkin Dash in Irving. I could feel the energy in me waiting to explode as I waited for the gun to go off Thursday. 3...2....1.. and we were off.

Every 5K, I try to hold back the first mile, catch my breath, and then hold on. It never works. And it didn't work Thursday. It's like I was shot out of a cannon. This time, I just let my legs go as fast as they wanted to and worried about catching my breath later. I got to the half-mile mark just under 3 minutes and knew I'd need to slow down a little bit if I wanted to finish. Slowing down helped me catch my breath and my Mile 1 split ended up being 6:13. Mile 2 had a few little hills. I decided to hold back a little bit so I could have something in the end. My Mile 2 split was 6:24.

At this point, I didn't know if I could keep this pace up. My breathing was under control and my legs felt ok, but this was uncharted territory for me. I wondered if the bottom was going to fall out on me. But I decided to go for it on the last mile. Funny thing is I felt better as the race wore on. Near the end, I poured it on and my Mile 3 split wound up being 6:09, my fastest mile in this race, or in any other race for that matter. When I rounded the corner for the final 10th of a mile, I could see the clock had just hit 19:00. "Oh, shit," I thought, "I'm going to run this thing under 20." On adrenaline, I sprinted the final way and wound up with an official time of 19:25.

The race organizers were having problems posting the results, so I didn't learn until this morning that I'd WON MY AGE GROUP. Woo-hooooooo. I won my age group.

After the 5k, I was absolutely glowing. I'd knocked off about 90 seconds from my previous 5K pr in 40 days. 90 seconds in 40 days! I was on Cloud 9. I'd never run under 20 minutes in a 5k before. Hell, I'd never run under 21 minutes before. I just kind of stood around in disbelief. Some of my friends who were there asked me how I did. I'd tell them, and then they were in disbelief. How do you knock off 90 seconds from a 5K in just over a month? I guess its all of this marathon training.

Anyway, there was not a whole lot of time to celebrate because the 10k was coming up in a few minutes. At this point, I didn't care how fast I'd finish this race. So, I lined up in the middle of the pack for the gun-time start. And the first mile, still stiff from standing around, I basically jogged and got to the Mile 1 split in 8:13. At this point, I thought about stopping. Things still kind of hurt from my first race, but I soldiered on and in the middle of Mile 2, I started feeling better and clocked a split of 7:20. The first two miles, I had debated whether to run hard or not, but my stride was back and my lungs were okay and I decided to just go for it.

And guess what happened? I finished each of the final 5 miles in under 7:00, and my 6th mile was faster than any of my other miles. I wound up with an official 10k time of 44:25, ANOTHER PR. My previous 10k pr, run in Fort Worth last February, was 46:57. So, by more than three minutes, I'd bested my 10k time. Wonder what I could have run if my legs were fresh? 43:25? 42:00?

Here are the splits for each race

5k
1 - 6:13
2 - 6:24
3 - 6:09
.12 - :41

10k
1 - 8:13
2 - 7:20
3 - 6:57
4 - 6:49
5 - 6:54
6 - 6:37
.27 - 1:36