First race of 2010

It was a gor­geous day here in San Fran­cis­co. 70 degrees and only a few wispy clouds. A per­fect day for my return to orga­nized races at the DSE Run­ners Mis­sion Bay 5K.

We had a great turnout due in part to a con­ven­tion in town. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many peo­ple at a DSE event, but I haven’t been run­ning for almost three years so maybe the club has got­ten more pop­u­lar while I’ve been away. There were a lot of peo­ple in the race from out of town and from out of the coun­try, so I sus­pect that the con­ven­tion had some­thing to do with it.

I’m not at the point where I care much about com­pe­ti­tion, but being with a large group of run­ners does change many aspects of the run. What­ev­er is done is done in front of oth­er run­ners who know what the score is. When run­ning alone on the street no one notices if I take a walk break, and if they do notice, they have no idea whether I’ve been run­ning for 30 yards or 30 miles. Not that I wor­ry much about whether oth­er peo­ple are watch­ing, but when in the pack one wants to stay a part of the pack.

Anoth­er one of the upsides of being in a race, espe­cial­ly for some­one just start­ing or like me get­ting back to run­ning, is that I can let the oth­ers keep pace for me. If some­one is going at a com­fort­able pace, I can just hang with them and judge my speed against them. I still have to pay atten­tion to whether it’s a com­fort­able pace for me, but keep­ing pace with some­one else is a good way to keep the pace consistent.

I start­ed the race off slow and easy (that’s the club mot­to: «start slow and taper off») and found myself doing exact­ly what I’m sup­posed to do. I relaxed into com­fort­able form with rel­a­tive­ly short, quick steps and my back, shoul­ders and hips in line with my weight just for­ward of cen­ter. With­out try­ing to force myself into good form, I just found it and ear­ly on rather than after mak­ing adjustments.

A few times I looked down at my GPS unit and found my pace to be high­er than I thought it should be. After a cou­ple months of strug­gling to make a twelve minute mile here I was, mov­ing com­fort­ably along at 9:05. Unbe­liev­able! How was that even possible? 

This was a new course for the DSE Run­ners. In pre­vi­ous years on this week­end the race had been the Mis­sion Rock 5K, which is basi­cal­ly a straight run down Illi­nois Street and back. The Mis­sion Bay course is a big improvement—a run on side­walks and foot­paths, right next to the water and around AT&T Park Mays Field. With a cou­ple of minor excep­tions the course was well-marked and very well cov­ered by course mon­i­tors who helped us stay safe while cross­ing streets that could­n’t be closed.

After I crossed the fin­ish I looked at my time and it did­n’t take much math to fig­ure out there was no way I had run any­thing like a nine minute mile pace. I looked back at the GPS and found that stand­ing still it was report­ing 9:35. That’s when I real­ized that I’d been look­ing at the time, not my actu­al pace. The GPS has mul­ti­ple screens with dif­fer­ent infor­ma­tion on it, and at some point I’m sure I want­ed to know what time it was but appar­ent­ly nev­er set it back.

Nonethe­less, my offi­cial time comes out to exact­ly an 11:00 per mile pace. For a guy who has been strug­gling to try to break a 12 minute mile, that’s still pret­ty great news.

I’m real­ly glad to have val­i­dat­ed that feel­ing that improv­ing my form trans­lates to faster times. Even if I’m nowhere near where I want to be, my times are mov­ing in the direc­tion I want them to and my com­fort lev­el is increas­ing. I’m attribut­ing this to the time I’ve spent research­ing prop­er form and try­ing to turn all the the­o­ry into prac­tice. Even though I’ve done only a cou­ple of bare­foot runs, I think that they have influ­enced my run­ning habits for the better.

I renewed my club mem­ber­ship, which will save me two dol­lars on each race fee. Nine more DSE races this year and the mem­ber­ship will pay for itself! Of course, even at the non-mem­ber price of $5, the DSE races are one of the best deals out there. It may not buy a com­mem­o­ra­tive T‑shirt, but fin­ish­ers bring home a rib­bon, there’s water and fruit avail­able at the fin­ish, race results and times are post­ed online, and it’s a great group of peo­ple from a broad range of abil­i­ty and ages. Whether you’re an elite run­ner or a walk­er, you won’t be alone on your run.