Why did I sign up to run this race? No joke, I have been trying to get a track race in since 2017! I tried twice that summer to run a track 5K and both times had to pull up short with a sudden calf strain. Since then I'd mostly been focused on other things, but a few years back, Tracksmith started their Twilight 5000 summer series, in which the company hosts a series of multi-heat 5000m track races around the country. When you sign up, you enter an estimated finish time, and then based on those times, they organize everyone into heats of ~20 people or so. (Estimated finish times range from 45:00 to sub-15:00 and there's also a kids' 500m heat, so definitely a heat for juuuuust about everyone who cares to run.)
Last year (2023), I signed up to run the San Francisco edition, but then--no joke--strained a calf muscle during a track workout a week before. 🤬 It had improved somewhat by race day but not even close enough to consider racing, so instead I cheered on my teammates and took photos. Having missed out, this year I signed up (as did many others) for both the Oakland and San Francisco iterations.
A couple of shots from SF Twilight 2023 last July
And then what happened?
I started to really fall in love with short, fast training again! Most of the time in the past when I've raced 5Ks, it's been more as a fitness check or doing something fun and close to home that fit my schedule while training for something longer. (In fact the first time I really, truly did focused training specifically for a 5K was Impala--previously Stow Lake--Stampede in 2022, and shock of shocks, ran my fastest time in over 10 years.) Other than that I've almost always been training more for a half marathon or marathon goal race and just thrown a 5K in there early in the training.
A few of my speedy teammates later on in the night
Now, don't get me wrong--I am still doing long runs and tempo intervals and still (mostly) running the same weekly volume. But there are a lot more 200ms, hill sprints, 800ms/1Ks/mile repeats at faster paces, and fast 100m/0:30 strides at the end of almost every easy run. I thought maybe that stuff would get old (or at least, make *me* feel old 😆), but it's actually been so much fun! I am finding that I actually *do* still have a good bit of speed in the legs even at the ripe old age of 43, and at least for now, I can still run the short fast intervals just as fast as I ever did (and faster than I have at some points).
I only have a few photos from my race, but the light was nice, so please enjoy these additional shots I took from the later heats.
Race Day
Like many others, I had the day off from work for the Juneteenth holiday, which meant that I was able to sleep in and get plenty of rest. For the most part I kicked back and relaxed until around 3pm, when I started gathering my stuff together. My race was not until 6:30pm and it was only a 12 mile trip, but I didn't know exactly what parking would be like and getting from SF to Oakland in the late afternoon can be a real 🤬, so I opted to leave around 4 (ok 4:15) to give myself oodles of time. I'd kind of thought maybe traffic wouldn't as bad thanks to the holiday; that immediately proved to be an inaccurate assumption as it took me over an hour to even get out of SF and onto the bridge. 🤦🏻♀️ But I was able to get parked on the street quite close so arrived at the track and got signed in at about 5:30pm. Several teammates were there already, so I dropped my stuff off with them and started to get ready to warm up.
The pretty sunset heat! 🌇
You would think that after decades of doing this that I would have the timing of warming up more or less down. Alas it still always takes longer than I think so if in my mind I want to warm up for three miles, even if I'm jogging 9-10 minute pace, I still need to get started 45-60 minutes before the gun. There are always going to be pit stops and pauses to shed layers or adjust skin-lubing or sunscreen and maybe waiting in a bathroom line, and then of course no one wants to roll up to the start seconds before the gun. (We were advised to be at the start 5-10 minutes before the scheduled start time for our heat.)
Twilight 5000m living up to its name 😍
By 6:15, I'd covered about two miles, so I grabbed my spikes and made my way to the infield where people were starting to congregate near the start. While I waited I did a few strides and drills. I was a bit nervous because I'd really been trying to optimize the last 4-6 weeks toward this race, but I also felt good and my last few workouts had given me plenty of confidence that I could beat the 22:00 predicted finish time I'd submitted when I registered.
Can I just say, as someone who is NOT a morning person and typically runs in the evening, I LOVE an evening race! By the time it was time to line up I was feeling awake and alert and rested and hydrated. My legs felt pretty good warming up, I had a decent recovery score (74%, solidly green), and the three or four strides I did in my trainers still felt pretty snappy. One never knows what will happen once the gun goes off, but at the very least, there was nothing I was actively worried about. I know it also helped that I had had two pretty solid workouts on the track the week before at close to race pace. I did not think I was going to PR or anything but I really felt confident it would be at worst a *solid* race. I thought my biggest risk was probably going out too fast, so I had my watch set to where I could see instantaneous pace to make sure I didn't do anything *truly* stupid.
The gun went and off we went.
Now, let me just point out that I entered 22:00 (7:05 pace) for my predicted finish time and the seed times for this heat were 23:30-21:59 (so, 7:40 pace to 7:05 pace). Initially I thought, Maybe that means it will make sense for me to try to run with the leaders since I am going to try to go out around 6:50 pace?
Well, let me just say that over half the people in this heat were FREAKING LIARS because a bunch of these mfs went out at sub-6:00 pace, no joke. (And, I'm no exception! I'm not saying I PR'd the 200m going around that first curve, but it was shockingly close to my 200m repeat pace. 🤣) I saw my first 400m split of 1:30 and immediately thought "Oh no."
The trouble is that track + spikes + caffeine + cheering & peppy music + everyone around you running like their hair is on fire means that things feel WAAAAAAAY easier than they should and WAAAAAAAY easier than they're going to feel even five minutes from now, so while one part of you is going "TOO FAST TOO FAST, RED ALERT, SLOW IT DOWN, SLOW IT DOOOWWWWWNNN!!!!", another part is going "Uhhhhhhh but this feels fine, why on earth would I slow down????"
So, yeah -- in my mind I was thinking "There is no way you're going to average faster than 6:45 pace for this whole race, so you really shouldn't be running mile 1 any faster than 6:50," but I kept seeing 6:20 and 6:22 and 6:25 etc. on my watch and knowing this was not going to be good for me by the second half of the race.
By the second half of mile 1 I'd slowed it down some, clocking off 6:35 for mile 1, still much faster than I'd planned. Welp, so much for going no faster than 6:50 in lap 1! 🤣
It will simply shock everyone that I began to really feel this in mile 2. At that point I was seeing numbers much closer to what I thought was sustainable (6:45-50ish), and as things started to get harder I'd occasionally see it dipping up into 7:0x. It wasn't that I couldn't run faster at that point, so I did keep trying to push it down closer to 6:50; I was just afraid that if I let myself run as fast as I could, I might die in mile 3. So I mostly spent mile 2 trying to keep the pace right around 6:50 so that in mile 3 I could let myself run as fast as I felt like.
And I was partly successful; I clocked 6:52 for mile 2 (nice!) BUT was very much in the pain cave by mile 3 and really struggling to maintain sub-7 pace. My legs were becoming noodly but I also think others were starting to slow a bit as well because I was able to pass several people in mile 3. I'd been imagining how with just one lap to go I'd really turn on the afterburners and sprint for it but by the time that moment came it was more like "Lord just please let me get through this last lap without passing away."
I think this was the end??? Not 100% sure.
📷 my teammate Shawnessy
I clocked 7:00 for mile 3, so not the speedy 3rd mile I was hoping for but also not terrible. Then in the last 200m I really just tried to give it everything I had left in the tank, which was not much BUT did allow me to pass a couple of people, including one of the three women ahead of me just steps before the line.
Garmin: 3.13 / 21:26 / 6:51 pace
(FYI, something is definitely wrong with the Strava record. Initially it gave the correct time and total distance of 3.13, then spontaneously changed mile 1 to 9:17 & the total time to 24:08 for reasons I don't understand. The original time/distance were still correct on my watch, so I deleted the Strava record, downloaded the .gpx file from Garmin, and uploaded it to Strava manually. Now it says 3.1 miles / 21:21. Even though the start and finish positions look correct, it's clearly somehow deleted .03 miles and 5 seconds. I don't understand it but I'm also not going to worry about it that much.)
Fast ladies post race
- I successfully ran not *just* under 22:00 but significantly under! I felt very confident I would break 22 but it felt extra great to break 21:30.
- Yes it *IS* one of the fastest 5Ks I've ever run (at least the 4th fastest, possibly the 3rd fastest), but it's the only 5K I've ever run on the track in spikes, so I don't think it's really comparable, to, say, when I ran a 21:21 road 5K in December 2018 (in regular flats!) or when I ran a moderately hilly 21:14 road 5K in May 2022. This was a solid race but I haven't even done that much focused 5K training recently and I really feel like I have a faster one in me.
- Yes I know I *did* go out too fast this time, but I think my strategy for improving is actually not to try to go out slower (ok maybe just a *tiiiiny* bit slower) but to work on holding that faster pace for longer as I work on my 5K fitness.
- Also I don't think I physically gave it all I had (my average heart rate was 179, that's lower than my PR marathon heart rate) so maybe part of this is that same thing I experienced in Eugene where my body just would not let me have all the available juice until the very very very end.
- I'm beginning to believe I *might* be able to break 21:00 on the track in spikes. Breaking it down, 21:26 over 5K ➡️ 6:55 pace & 20:59 ➡️ 6:46 pace. So we gotta find 9 seconds per mile somehow. I don't know if I can do it in one month but I don't know that I can't do it in one month!
Up Next
We go again on July 17 at the SF version! Can't wait.
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