Carrollton 5k (Week 18)

On Saturday I ran the Carrollton 5k, which is a local race put on by the city.  It's a nice race that tends to top out around 500 runners, which is good considering we are running on a cement trail that is about twice as wide as a regular sidewalk.  Many of the runners live in the immediate area but there are some folks that come from other nearby cities to run this specific race.

I did alright in the race.  I managed to finish 17th out of 41 runners in the Male 30-39 division.  I finished with an official time of 28:19.90, which is about a 1:15 slower than what I ran last year (26:55.16).  I had a chance to PR had I not gotten a severe leg cramp right around the 3 mile marker.

I heard via a third party (I don't know if the woman was the race director or not) that the race course will be changing next year.  The idea is so that people won't have to park at the high school and then be bused to the start line.  The course will still be on the Carrollton trail network which is nice in that there aren't any significant street closures with how the course is currently designed.  We did cross the street in two places and the Carrollton PD is there to manage traffic but it's nothing like most races where you run on nothing but streets.

After the race I ran back with some other people to pick up their car, so I managed 6.2 miles for the day.  For the most part it was a pretty good day.

I paid for running that 5k pretty hard the next day when I needed to run 10 miles as part of maintaining my marathon training schedule.  My legs felt like jello and that nasty cramp in my left leg was still there.  In fact it was so bad I walked most of the abbreviated route.  I decided to walk rather than trying to run through the pain since I am too close to my race that I didn't want to risk an injury.  I was worried about having the cramp turn into some worse like a pulled muscle.