Race Report: 2011 North Carolina Blueberry Festival 5K

Last Saturday, June 18, I participated in the North Carolina Blueberry Festival 5K. My goal was to break 60 minutes, but I was a little nervous about it. Anything can happen on race day, even in a 5K! This was my second trip to  Burgaw, so I knew that the course would be pretty flat.

I rode down with fellow Raleigh Galloway runner Marjorie and her boyfriend, Rudy, and we left from Raleigh about 5:00 AM. (I think this is the farthest I've driven to a race and not spent the night!) We ended up with plenty of time before the 7:30 AM start to warm up and use the porta-johns (some of the nicest I've ever been in, seriously!).

The race started on time, and I had my interval timer set to run/walk at 30 second intervals. That worked pretty well, as I was able to maintain that throughout the race.The course was flat, over several neighborhood streets. There wasn't much crowd support, but maybe the residents were already at the Blueberry Festival! There was a firetruck along the course that had water streaming from the hose, and I ran under it a couple of times, but was sorry later that I had done that. It was so humid that my wicking shirt never dried. I was glad I brought a change of clothes for walking around the festival!

I ended up with a chip time of 58:06, and a gun time of 58:39, and that's with having to stop and tie my shoe! I came in 475th out of 482 runners and walkers, and 30/30 in my age group. Official results are here. Slow as my finishing time was, I'm encouraged the progress over my last 5K.

NC Blueberry Festival

Marjorie, Rudy, and I enjoyed walking around the North Carolina Blueberry Festival afterward. Many vendors were in the courthouse square shown on the left. (If you click on the picture to make it a little bigger, you can make out the Pender County Courthouse in the background.) I bought two pints of blueberries--yum!! (Now I wish I'd bought more!)

Marjorie and Rudy

There was a classic car show going on in conjunction with the Blueberry Festival. Here are Marjorie and Rudy in front of one of my favorite cars there.

Love the License Plate!

The back of the same car, with a clever license plate!



The rest of my pictures from Burgaw and the 2011 NC Blueberry Festival are here.

Magic Mile #2

I did my second Magic Mile of the Raleigh Galloway season this morning. I decided to head for the American Tobacco Trail, but got there later than I'd planned. The temperature outside was warming up already, but I decided to go ahead and get it done.

Walked 0.52 mi in 12:01 min to warm up
Ran 1 mile in 17:44
Walked 0.63 in 14:10 min to cool down

My first Magic Mile on 5/14/11 was 18:00, so there's some improvement. Not a lot, but some. According to my current MM time, my training pace should be a good bit slower than the pace group I'm running with--or better yet, running behind, but not THAT far behind, and I'm closing the gap. I do feel like my Magic Miles have been a good, hard effort. My knees, in fact, are talking to me this evening, so I'll be taking an Epsom Salt bath after I finish this post!

Jeff Galloway recommends running Magic Miles every two weeks or so. Once you have four Magic Mile times, drop the slowest and average the remaining three for an indicator of various race times. I hope I can continue to see improvements over the summer, even with the rising temperatures. Since my target race for 2011 is the City of Oaks Half Marathon in November, the cooler fall temperatures will be a plus.

Speaking of the Galloway group, George has started a Facebook page for our Raleigh Galloway pace group, the Pacers! Check it out here and feel free to "like" it!

Meanwhile, I've registered for the North Carolina Blueberry Festival 5K, which is in Burgaw on June 18. I'm really excited about it, and hope that I can beat my 5K time from the Catch Me If You Can 5K back on Mother's Day!