Toronto Women's 5K Recap - October Edition

This past Saturday was the final race of the year for me - The Toronto Women's 5K and 8K.

My original plan for the year was to run the 8K. But I ended up signing up for the 5K for two reasons - It was two week's after the half marathon and I wanted an opportunity to improve my 5K PR.

Saturday morning was quite chilly but Sunnybrook park was lovely with fall colours. I met up with Running Jennie who was also running the 5K. We've been blog/daily mile friends for a while so it was great to meet in person. Jennie contacted me the week before and asked if I wanted to run for her and she would help me get to my goal of running a 5K in the 38 minute range. I've never run with anyone else (other then my husband who is much faster then me and we both end up annoyed) but thought this would be fun so we meet up.

Racing with a buddy was super fun. We chatted the whole way and kept up a decent pace. Having someone to chat with made the race go by fast.

We did 3-1 run/walk intervals most of the time and had enough energy left at the end to finish strong. Completely crushed my goal of running a 38 minute 5K.

New 5K PR

36 minutes 23 seconds

I'm flying! Weee!

This was pretty huge for me. Let's look at my previous 5K times, shall we?

August 2010 (first race) - 41:26

September 2010 - 40:31

October 2010 - 40:17

May 2011 - 39:36

I'm pretty happy with cutting over 3 minutes off my previous 5K time.

Thank you Jennie for pushing me out of my comfort zone! 

Running Jennie's Photo

I learned a couple of things at this last race. First, that I'm not pushing myself hard enough. I've been coasting in my 8min/km zone so I need to work more on my speed. Also, running with other people is fun! I'm going to look into a running room clinic for the spring.