The Cardinal Classic

It’s been two years since I first ran the 5k, here at the Cardinal Classic, and since then I’ve only run it two more times (San Francisco and Macabbiah). Coming into this weekend, I knew that I could run a good time, but with the lack of experience in the race I wasn’t quite sure how it would all play out. Coach Wick told me what I needed to do in the race, so I just focused on that.

The race was scheduled for 7:30pm, which was nice because it’s been fairly warm in San Jose this past week. I got lucky that passover didn’t start until the night, so I was able to get my three pieces of peanut butter toast in for breakfast. But I brought the matzah with me to the race for after. The rest of the morning I distracted myself with some homework and got a light 10 minute shakeout in just to keep my legs loose. Coach Sarver picked me and the other 5k runners up from the dorms at 4:30pm and we headed over to Stanford. On the way over Bruce reminded me, as always, about what I’m born to do.

The benefit of running the 5k this week was that I’m not the only one on the team who runs this event. I had Jose to run with as well, and we were supposed to be hitting similar times, so it would work well for us. We did the usual 20 minute warmup, drills, and strides and then they took us out to the track to get the race started.

We had a rabbit in our heat who was going through 8 laps and running 67’s from the front. My goal for this race was to be running 67/68’s for the entire race, so it was exactly what we needed. But that’s not how it turned out for me. There were about 25 guys in the  race, which strung out pretty quickly, but it was a little bit bunched up at the beginning. Around 400 meters into the race, I hit the guys feet in front of me, stumbled and recovered, then got clipped, twice,  by the runner behind me, and stumbled into lane 6 to recover and try not to fall. Unfortunately I fell off of the pack that I needed to go with and I was chasing people that fell off that lead pack for the rest of the race. It would have been easy to just fall off and count myself out of the race, but I knew I could still run a good time so I shifted into just trying to run consistent laps and go for a PR. I was running consistently 68-69 seconds per lap, and most of them just looking at the people in front of me and trying to pass them. Once I went around someone I never saw them again, which was a good feeling, but I was doing so much more work being in no-mans-land. It would have been much easier to hang onto the pack with their rabbit and go through at the times I needed to. All I remember in the middle of the race was getting to 3000m and thinking to myself, “Man if this was the steeplechase, I would have been done by now.” In reality I just need to run a few more 5k’s to really get a hang of how to race it, but that’s not in the cards for this season. Towards the end of the race, I again was focusing on not counting myself out and trying to pick it up and close well. With one lap to go, I saw 13:15 on the clock, and so I was determined to run below 14:20. I closed with a 63 second lap and ran 14:18.27. Which is a 15 second PR for me in the 15.

Overall the race wasn’t what I wanted it to be, but I made the best of an unfortunate situation. I’m still happy that I was able to get a personal best in the race and my time places me 9th on the All-Time Top-10 list for SJSU! Jose also ran a great race, running at 14:06 and placing 4th on the All-Time Top-10 list. I’ll be back to the steeplechase and going for the school record in two and a half weeks at the Mountain West Conference Championships. The conference has some solid competition, so I’m very excited to see what I can do. Be back soon!