Chili Bowl Classic 5k

Yesterday was the Chili Bowl Classic 5k in downtown Cleveland.  It's the first race in the Hermes Road Race Series so I was excited to do well.  Coming in I knew I had several weeks of solid training behind me but I also hadn't done any speedwork so I really had no idea what I could do for 5k.  My goal was just to break 17.  I guess that really says a lot about my training since at this time last year breaking 17 would have been a reach goal and now it's a pretty conservative goal.  Generally speaking, the downtown courses aren't very fast since you usually have to deal with some form of hill, either E. 9th, W. 3rd, or one of the bridges.  

I did my usual 20 min warmup with 4x 30 sec fartlek.  The legs felt pretty good going fast so that gave me some confidence.  The field for this race was pretty competitive.  In fact, the overall winner was actually the Ohio D1 XC champ in 2006.  They rang the bell and we were off.

I'm on the far left in the orange top

The pace went out pretty slow, it seemed like a lot of the other top guys were just feeling each other out and no one really wanted to push the pace.  The course started at the Galleria headed down Lakeside to W. 3rd and then down the W. 3rd hill and the mile mark was behind Browns Stadium.  I ran the first mile in 5:10 and was in 7th place.  The course then continued around the stadium and past the Science Center, at which point their was a hairpin turn.  The course basically just reversed itself from this point.  As I was running back toward the stadium I was scanning the crowd to cheer on people I knew.  Unfortunately, I missed Katie; the crowd was just too thick.  I reached the second mile mark at 10:45.

As we came back up the W. 3rd hill I really tried to push the pace to catch the guys in front of me but I didn't really seem to make up much ground.  When we got to the top of the hill I committed the cardinal sin of racing and looked over my shoulder to see how far back the people behind me were.  I was basically in no man's land at this point, with nobody really within 20 seconds of me in either direction.  I really just wanted to be done.  I counted down the streets as we went back up Lakeside: Ontario, E.6th, E.9th, and finally E. 12th where we made the turn for the finish.  My final time was 16:45, 7th overall and 1st in my age group.

After the race I saw this quote on the back of someone's shirt, "If at the end of the race you still look pretty, you aren't doing it right."

Nobody looks good at the end of a race

Well, I guess I'm at least doing it right.

The awards for the race were little chili bowls which was pretty cool.

Chili Bowls!

They also had free chili after the race but we didn't have time to stay.  Overall, I really liked this race.  It was the first time I ever ran this race, and like all Hermes races it was very well organized.  I also accomplished my goal of breaking 17.  I ran basically the same time as the Reindeer Run, but this was definitely a harder course, so it seems like I'm improving.  Hopefully, none of the six guys in front of me is also doing the race series ;)  I'm looking forward to my next race, the St. Malachi 5 Miler, which is another race series race.  I will probably be aiming for a 5 mile PR there.

Congratulations to everyone who ran on Saturday, and a special shout out to Katie's friend Meredith, who PR'ed and won her age group!

Who else ran Chili Bowl?  Who will be at Malachi?  Anyone else doing the race series?