Remember when I talked a big game about trying to be consistent in my training and maintaining my 4-mile pace in this weekend’s Pride Run 5M? Well, here are my splits: 8:05, 8:25, 8:15, 9:00, 7:57. Yeah.

I’d never raced a 5-miler before, so I was anxious to find out whether it would be fantastic like a 4-miler or terrible like a 10K. If I’d been able to run around my 4-mile pace of 7:31, I would have finished in under 38 minutes. Instead, my official finish time was 41:31. Not too shabby, but I would definitely like to see some improvement considering that this distance was nearly 12 minutes slower than my 4-mile time despite being only one mile longer. While I did run the whole time, I also stopped for water twice, something I usually won’t do for shorter distances. (It was hot! This explains that 9-minute mile.) Once I knew my time goal wasn’t happening, I just focused on getting my speed back up. I somehow got confused and thought the race clocks were in real time since I started pretty close to the front corral, so when I made the last turn and saw the seconds ticking away on the clock above the finish, I sprinted my little heart out to finish in under 42 minutes. I obviously later realized I had an extra 29 seconds banked when the final results came in, but at least my false impression got me a sub-8 mile and in the last mile at that!

Post-race photo with former roommate Jenny.

I’d like to give this distance another shot in a different season to shoot for a faster time, but NYRR seems to only host them in the summer. That said, I would definitely do the Pride Run again, as the race itself had a great atmosphere and awesome crowd support!