Bazan Bay 5k

March 7, 2010

I've been quite negligent on updating recently and am now two races behind on my blogging. Some home renovations and family visits have sucked up most of my free time. Fortunately, a 5k is a quick race to do a report on.

Bazan is always a competitive race, being the shortest of the Island Race Series and bringing out the speedy National Triathlon team members in force. In fact, the top 5 spots all went to triathletes. I'd been hoping for a good performance here as my training has been solid and focused largely on speed sessions. I posted a 16:02 here last year so a time under 16 min was certainly in the cards. I hoped to get around 15:45 (3:09 pace) so went into the race with that in mind.

Conditions were about perfect for racing with no wind and cool temps. This year, the timing was also better in that the shift to daylight savings didn't occur until the next weekend so we were not robbed an hour of sleep like in previous years.

I found myself behind around 25 racers by the first km marker which I went though in 3:04. I wasn't particularly worried as I knew as long as my race went well many of those guys would fall back since there was no way they could all maintain such a pace. I decided to ease off a bit to try and settle into my goal pace of 3:09 for the next km or two before going hard for the last 2 km.

Although it didn't seem like I was losing ground to the guys in front of me, I was rudely shocked when I saw the 2nd km split of 3:16 which as 7 sec too slow. I had to kick it up or I would never be able to meet my goal time so I put the hammer down and started catching up to those in front. I passed a few in the next km (3:07) and even more in the next km which I did in 3:09. It felt good to be able to power though and catch many of those who were struggling to keep their pace. Paul O’Callaghan was on course encouraging us so that was great.

Unfortunately for them, both Shawn Nelson and Eric Findlay were both hurting from 3-4km and I managed to move ahead of them. I started to pay for my quick pace on the last km, however, and had a tough time maintaining my speed. I lost a few seconds, but still managed to post a 3:11 on the last km and had a decent kick into the finish even though there was no one close enough to catch. I crossed in 15:47, good for a 15 sec PB and a new personal points record (824) . I think I could have taken a couple of more seconds off if I had paced myself more evenly, but I did feel strong so I know the speed work is paying off for sure. I was 14th overall which meant I had passed around 10 guys after the first km.

The local two time Olympic medalist, Simon Whitfield won in 14:36 with his training partner Kyle Jones just 2 sec back. Top woman was Magali Tisseyre in 17:03. Keith Mills continued a strong year running 16:03 and Sonja ran under 20min for the first time ever.

Sadly, we later found out that a runner had collapsed from a heart attack at the 1km mark and later died at the hospital. Unfortunately this happens from time to time, but I'm sure that running extends peoples lives much more than it shortens them.

My splits were 3:04, 3:16, 3:07, 3:09, 3:11. Final Results.