Early every December there’s a 5K run just prior to the Christmas Parade through downtown Bend. It’s the annual Jingle Bell Run and it’s a fund-raiser for the Arthritis Foundation. But it’s in December, and the weather is usually cold and icy and miserable. So I’ve never participated before. But this year winter has been slow to arrive. The parade and the Jingle Bell run were the day before yesterday, and it was a freakishly beautiful day for running!
So I signed up at the last minute and ran in short sleeves and shorts. I was curious to test myself a bit to see what amazing magic was being worked upon me in the Tuesday Night Performance Running Clinics. My plan was to start hard and see how long I could hold on. The Jingle Bell Run isn’t really a race – only the first three men and women are timed, and a lot of people show up in costumes appropriate to the season. I lined up a row or two back from the front, but I found myself behind a couple of elves and a team of reindeer. By the time I’d nudged myself around them, I was on the very front row. There was a mix of folks up front, but most of the front row was filled with excited, eager kids – the kind who explode off the line and have a wonderful time for the first quarter or half mile. The run follows the parade route through downtown, and the crowd was building and perhaps a bit bored waiting for the parade. Old guys and kids alike got a few moments of glory as we charged down the parade route to the cheers of the parade spectators. Bend’s old downtown is three blocks long, and at the end of that stretch is when the most exuberant of the kids started to fade. It’s also where the truly fast guys started coming by me (they’d presumably been stuck for a bit behind some reindeer). I didn’t count, but it felt like a dozen or fifteen guys came by. After about half a mile I was settled in to line of guys that barely changed for the rest of the run. One or two guys came by and one or two fell back.
My Garmin is set to beep every mile, and it beeped within a few feet of the 1-mile sign. That’s always reassuring. I glanced at the time at the mile, and it was 5:52. Well, that was faster than I’m used to running! I tried to keep myself at the same level of effort to see if I could hang on. The first mile had a bit of downhill, and the second mile was flat or a little uphill… and there was a bit of a headwind. So I expected to be a little slower. But the second mile beeped at 12:14, so I’d managed only a 6:22 for the second mile. The third mile was with the wind and generally a little downhill, but it had a noticeable climb in the last quarter mile. I didn’t look at my watch when it beeped at three miles, but the Garmin tells me the third mile was a 6:24. I’d say I was definitely fading. My Garmin also reported a total distance of 3.2 miles, and it tells me I ran the final .2 miles at a 5:34 pace. The Garmin reported a 6:10 average pace, but I don’t get too excited about the absolute numbers it gives me (I suspect it reads a little long, so I assume it thinks I’m faster than I am). But I assume it’s probably pretty consistent, and I can compare data from different races. It’s the fastest pace my Garmin has reported for a 5K, so I think the Tuesday night workouts are working!
