13th Annual FWRC Labor Day Runs

Another day, another race. This morning the race du jour was the Fort Worth Runners Club's Labor Day 15K. I finished the 9.32 mi route in 1:19:49 for a 8:32/mi pace. Good enough for 15th out of 35 in my age group, 106th out of 220 men, and 154th out of 420 overall.

This is about about 3 minutes faster than last year and also a new PR for me for the 15K distance. However, this PR is somewhat misleading since I completed this past February's Cowtown Half-Marathon at a 8:29 pace and that race was almost 4 miles longer. I've run five 15Ks so far - four during the heat of the summer (Too Hot To Handle in July and the FWRC Labor Day Runs) and the other one (Too Cold To Hold in January) was during my bout with ITBS. I hope to improve my 15K time over the winter running season - just gotta stay injury free. :-P

After a fast start with the masses, I settled into a 8:15/mi pace, which is my current 15K goal pace. Just after the Mile 2 mark, my friend Ellie caught up to me and we ran together and kept a fairly even (8:25-8:30/mi) pace for the next 6 miles. 

Unfortunately, around Mile 8 I started to run out of gas and took a one-minute walk break to get my heart rate down (Ellie sprinted on for the last mile or so and ended up winning her age group!).  After the break I was re-energized and made a strong final push for the finish line.

Speed (7.0 MPH average) and Heart Rate (169 BPM average) charts below (both are slightly messed up at the end because I stopped my Garmin Forerunner 305 about a minute after actually finishing) ...

I'm pretty happy with my performance, but I'm still looking forward to becoming even more consistent with my pace. Hopefully, I'll get that as I ramp up my running - distance & frequency.

Route Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/kml/episode.kml?episodePkValues=6660013

Full Results: http://results.active.com/pages/page.jsp?eventID=1632221&pubID=3