Dodge the Deer 5k

This morning I ran the Dodge the Deer 5k down in Schodack Island Park.  It was my first race of the season and only my second race in the past year as I'm not much for running for distance.  However, it's only 5km so how bad could it be?

The weather report said it might rain today, but it ended up a pretty nice day with sun and a light breeze at times.  The course winds its way through the park with most of the running on a trail rather than pavement.  I was officially chip timed in 28:23 which means I was doing about 9 min/mile which was my goal.  I'm continually working my way into shape and figure that I should eventually be able to get to about 8 min/mile. I've had a cough the past couple of weeks so I think I could've done even better had I been healthy.  I did meet all of my goals:

1. Finish the race.
2. Run the entire race with no walking.
3. Don't finish last.
4. Finish in under 30min.

I spent most of the race focusing on putting one foot in front of the other and I'm not going to lie and say I enjoy this kind of running, but it was a good experience overall.  I got a cool pair of running socks with my registration and they had a pretty good picnic spread for food afterwards.  There was a good turnout with 322 racers though not everyone finished.  I ended up finishing in about the middle of the pack with the winning time being 16:36.

Here is the race course as seen in Google Earth:

Here is my speed and heart rate:

You can see by the heart rate trace that I was definitely putting some work in.

I've been told there are a lot of 5k races in the Albany area so I think I'll try to do one a month or maybe two every three months.  They're a good challenge for me and it's a good opportunity to get out and about.