Race Report: Impala Stampede 5K 2024

Why did I sign up to run this race? 

This race has I think been a Pacific Association race & part of the Road Short Course Grand Prix since its inception. Up until this year it had been called the Stow Lake Stampede, but with the renaming of Stow Lake (for very good reasons), the race needed a new moniker as well. Since "Blue Heron Lake Stampede" doesn't quite roll off the tongue in the same way, the race ended up taking the name of its sponsoring team. Because it's a PA race and starts literally three miles from my house, I signed up for it a long time ago because it's an easy way to help meet my team obligation of running eight PA races per year.

And then what happened?

The last two years, I've run this race to truly race it, but this year I really wanted to focus on the summer Tracksmith Twilight 5Ks. With Mile of Truth on May 19th and the first Twilight 5K on June 19th, I didn't really want to add another all-out effort in between with all the recovering and tapering that it entails. So instead I decided to use this 5K as a workout this year (which I also feel fine about since it's so close to home and I get reimbursed for it). After giving it some thought, I decided to try to run the first two miles at tempo-ish pace and then push the last mile as fast as I felt like.

Race Day

(Not a lot of photos from this one, sorry!)

I also needed to get a long run in on this day and kept going back and forth about whether to jog there, race, do a bit of a cool down, and then jog home, or to just drive. I've done the jog-there-and-back thing before and while I raced just fine, I remember being a bit stressed about getting there and also getting really thirsty and not having a big water bottle. It seemed so dumb to drive, especially when I needed to do a lot of extra running anyway, but in the end I decided I would be less stressed if I just got there a little earlier (to find reasonable parking) and could just throw all my crap in the car.

Because I got there early I was able to park quite easily and sip my caffeinated water and nibble on my Nature's Bakery bar in a leisurely manner. Around 7:45am I set out on my warm-up, jogging a little museum loop around the park, and ugh, let me say, I felt BAD and was super glad I wasn't planning to go all-out. I paused back at the start area to wait in the port-a-potty line, then jogged back to my car to ditch my warm-ups and grab a bit more water. After dropping my stuff off where the team had congregated and doing a little more jogging, it was time to line up. 

I'm not 100% sure what my tempo / LT pace is right now, but I *think* maybe it's in the 7:25 range. Since this is a moderately hilly race, I thought if I could keep it around 7:30 for the first two miles, that would be sufficient for my purposes. I didn't *quite* nail that, clocking 7:39 for mile 1. (GAP says 7:30, which makes sense since mile 1 ends with a big hill, so I feel okay about it.) 

To make up for the dearth of pictures from 2024, please enjoy this shot from the same race in 2022

Mile 2 starts out with a rude sort of hill (or a continuation rather of the hill from mile 1) and I have run this race enough times now to anticipate how terrible and hopeless it feels and the sensation I have often had of "Welp, this is *definitely* the end of race pace, RIP miles 2 & 3." On the other hand, that means I also remember how after you push through that section, the speed does come back and you're able to pretty quickly recover your pace. So instead of feeling disheartened when I hit that section, I instead kind of went, "Yep, been here, done this, keep on truckin', it'll pass," and sure enough, it did. (I feel like when I am fitter that post-hill speed/effort recovery happens a little more quickly and easily, and for all that I didn't feel great on this day, I did have a sense at that point that I could still sort of "feel" my fitness in that small little way.

I also remember that last year I was caught off-guard by the last real hill in this race which comes toward the last third or so of mile 2 and that (combined with how terrible a day I was already having) was super SUPER discouraging and probably felt tougher than it was as a result. This time at least I remembered that it was there and was both mentally prepared and able to positively talk myself through it the way I had on the previous one. Despite the two not-insignificant hills in this mile, I still clocked 7:31, so, again, feeling pretty good about it.

Mile 3 is *mostly* downhill (with the exception of one stretch of gradual uphill), so it was mentally (if not physically) easy to say "OK, let's see to what extent we can light 'er up in this last mile." The answer was, "Not a whole lot, actually," but I did manage to significantly speed up to 6:58 for that mile and then 53 seconds / 6:38 pace for the last 0.13, which feels respectably okay on a day when I wasn't feeling great. (I would say I put maybe a 90% effort into that last mile, so not all-out, but still pushing it pretty hard.)

After grabbing my free socks, chugging an Athletic Brewing hazy IPA, and posing for a team photo, I headed out on my cool-down with the goal of hitting 14 miles for the day. It quickly became apparent that that was NOT happening--I really, really struggled to put one foot in front of the other and finishing even two cool down miles was a real fight. I ended up with ~7.4ish for the day & resolved to get a double-digit easy run in the next day instead. Later that day I looked at my recovery score and LOLOLOL it was suddenly much less of a mystery why I felt like such trash.

"You overreached today" yeah no shit Sherlock, thanks for that brilliant insight 🤣

Takeaways 

• I think I did what I intended to--two miles around tempo/threshold pace plus a hard(er) fast(er) mile at the end. The effort felt right (hard, but not race-hard) and I got one more opportunity under my belt to practice all the mental stuff I've been working on for the last few months.
• The fact that this workout went as well as it did given my 4 hours of sleep and HRV of 18 (!!) is either an encouraging sign or means I pushed it way, WAY too hard, who can say??? Not me.
• We've already covered how I had a shit spring 2023 racing season, but it's still nice to see that (1) I really, truly raced hard at this event last year and ran 23:30, and this year ran 23:03 as a workout, and (2) my last mile split this year was the same as my last year's all-out Mile of Truth. So things are looking up vs. this time last year which is never a thing to take for granted!

Up Next

Again, the next races I'm planning on as of the writing of this race report are the Twilight 5Ks on the track in Oakland (June 19) and San Francisco (July 17)! Excited to go into those with a *bit* more speed-focused training than I had for this race. 😅