Thursday, June 19, 2014

Braves Country 5K – The little race that could!

The Braves Country 5K, while a new distance, the event itself has become a Father’s Day tradition of sorts.  Starting and finishing inside of Turner Field this is a nice event which presents a reasonable challenge and for some a nice tune up race for the AJC Peachtree Road Race (PRR) on July 4th.




This year there was a new, yet welcome, twist to the event.  In year’s past this race was a 4 miler, twisting and turning in the neighborhoods near Turner Field.  This year the event was scaled down to a 5K.  In my opinion, this turned out to be a great move by the folks with the Atlanta Track Club.  Any runner in the Atlanta area will tell you… heat, hills, and humidity are just a part of the fabric of the Atlanta running community and I think having 1 mile (technically .9 of a mile) less of hills to contend with was very well received by the race participants. 



Two months removed from my marathon, and with 3 weeks left until PRR, I felt participating in this race would be a good benchmark to see how my training was progressing.  Overall, I’m happy with the results, but I see where there are some areas which need addressing.  Time will tell if I will be able to make the needed adjustments before the PRR.
My final results:

Split
Time
Distance
Avg Pace
Summary
19:17.8
3.12
6:11
1
5:50.0
1.00
5:50
2
6:17.9
1.00
6:18
3
6:27.4
1.00
6:27
4
:42.6
0.12
5:41
Bottom of Form

Obviously, you can see I started out fast and my pace started to slow.  I attribute this to focusing more on marathon related workouts as my body is more conditioned to race at a “slower” pace compared to 5K race pace.  Either way I’ll take it.  If you’re in the Atlanta area and can fit this into your schedule next year I highly recommend it.  Until then… Keep Running!!

        



Photo credit: Jennie Coakley