This past weekend was the Melbourne Art Festival which is kicked off every year with a 5K. This is a huge race and I think this year there was just under 1500 runners. This was my second time running this 5K and when I ran it two years ago it was my first race ever. My goal this year was an average pace of seven minutes per mile. This normally isn’t a big deal for me and I can accomplish that but this 5K requires you to run over the causeway, twice. That adds a bit of difficulty to it.

The morning was beautiful and my friends and I left for the race around 7:15 that morning. I wanted to leave early, the race started at 8:00, since I knew parking may be an issue. We quickly found a parking spot and then walked over to the starting line where we signed ourselves in. We did a bit of wandering around and warming up and before we knew it we were being instructed to line up for the start.

The biggest problem I seem to have with racing is that I never start in the correct place. I always feel like I get stuck behind someone who is going at a slower pace then I am and then I have to pass them. I’m now convinced that this is slowing me down a bit. Once I had cleared the people in front of me though I was cruising right along. I had ran the course a few times the week before so I knew what my pace would be and would know how to conquer the causeway.

I ended up crossing the finish line with a time of 23:09 which equates to and average pace of 7:28 a mile. Not a bad time at all considering I came in 9th in my age group and 157th overall. Here is a link to all the times: http://www.altavistasports.com/results/2009results/melbourne5k042509.html. I know there were some photos taken as well but I don’t know where they are. If I find a link I’ll update the post.