Stampede Run 5K & Race Time Calculator

Today I finished the Stampede Run 5K in 21:30.  I wanted to be closer to 21 minutes, but kind of expected more like 21:30 and my time averaged 6:55 pace, so I'm OK with that for right now.  I thought I'd be able to run faster since I ran a 3.5 mile race over a month ago at 6:57 pace.  My splits were 6:42, 6:58, and 7:49 for the last 1.1  - there was a 3 mile mark I realized after the race but I seemed to miss it while I was actually running.  So that last mile was right around 7 minutes also.  I obviously checked the race results online and would've easily taken first in my age group, but I had a registration fail.  I did not register ahead of time and apparently they only accept cash at race day registration and I only had $20 with me, not the required $35.  So I ran the race bandit-style.  Unfortunately, this meant no race shirt and no prize for winning my age group which is an awesome pint glass.  I do already have 3 of them from past years, but would've liked another.  After the race, I got to watch Julianne finish the 5K and then ran backwards along the course to find Jessica and run the last mile of the 10K with her.

Something we talked about during yesterday's long run was training paces and how different race distances can help predict your marathon time. However, I still don't think it's always necessarily a good indicator. Even Dave, who I ran with yesterday, said he ran a half marathon in 1:24 and could not seem to break a 3:10 marathon. He said he believes a lot had to do with the fact that when he was in that good of shape, it was snowing the day of the marathon and some people are just better at shorter distances and some better at longer.

I looked online and found what appears to be a very popular race time predictor here.  I was playing around with the calculator and put in today's 5K time, last month's half marathon time, and my goal marathon time.  I doubt anyone would ever run exactly the times such a calculator would predict, but it does seem to provide a good general idea/range of times.  Here's what I got:

So especially based on this, I should've ran a little faster than I did today.  Even the 10K time it predicted based on today's 5K would be slower than the first 10K I ran in last month's half marathon.  But I think it all just has to do with the conditions of the day.  Today was almost 80 degress already in the morning and that half marathon was rainy and cool.  My training this week was also a little skewed due to other circumstances and my mental state was not 100% this morning due to the registration issue.  I definitely still have some work to do though to feel more confident in the pace I want to run the marathon.  I wasn't planning to do any other races between now and the Chicago Marathon, but might do the Rock n' Roll Half Marathon in 2 weeks.  But that's probably going to depend on how the next 2 weeks go and probably what the weather is looking like that day.  Even if I don't register, I'd probably still go downtown for it and jump in to get in a solid run around other people.

Do you ever run races without registering? - I do quite a bit...usually if I'm just using it as a training run or to run with someone else.