Running My First 5K In Vibram Five Fingers

The day of the Matthews 5K finally arrived. It is my first 5K since July 24th and my first wearing my Vibram Five Fingers KSOs. I had slowly built up mileage on them over the past couple of months and felt confident I was ready to wear them to race. At this point going back to regular running shoes is not an option and my only other option would be to wear my Puma H Streets however with those I have to wear socks and I end up with some blisters. The plus side of wearing the Five Fingers was no socks and no apparent blisters. To be fair it was in the 50s when I ran today and not in the 80s-90s which is usually when I get blisters so the jury is still out on the blister factor. I wanted to get a few more road runs in before this race but it just wasn't happening.

The race only had 57 participants. The July 4th race back in 2008 at the same Matthews location drew almost triple that number. I am thinking perhaps the recession and other local competing races were reasons for the low attendance. With that said it was easy to get near the front at the starting line. In the first minute or two I was actually keeping pace with the leaders. We turned a couple of corners and the distance between myself and the leaders(only four or five guys) started widening. Three guys passed me early as the gap was widening. Two of them looked like they were around my age so I knew I had to keep a strong pace to stay in the top three in my age bracket. The front runners looked much younger than me so I was not concerned. The other guy that passed me was pushing one of those baby buggies and keeping a heck of a pace but luckily he too looked younger than me. This race used 10 year age groups so I was in the 40-49 which is extremely competitive even in a small race. I ended up passing one person, a 14 year old, somewhere in the first mile. In the second mile a tall guy with blonde hair passed me. He looked younger so again I was not too concerned.

I remained close behind the blonde guy when we came to the crucial part of the race - the big long downhill into the big long uphill which comes just before mile marker 2. I conserved lots of energy on the downhill and was getting ready for the uphill when I noticed Blonde Boy was not moving that quickly up the hill. I thought I would give it a go at speeding up and passing him. I tend to enjoy running up hills so I slowly kicked it into gear. For a few seconds I was neck and neck with Blondie and when he didn't seem to be accelerating I turned on the juice and regained my lead. He was not able to catch me after that.

After that there was nobody to pace with as the distance between myself and those in front of me had grown quite wide. Two of the guys in front of me were within eye shot but I knew it would take a major sprint to catch them and not knowing the course that well I was not sure how much of the race was left so I conserved for most of the last mile. Another factor in the last mile was knowing where to turn. The course was not well marked and I was thrown off a couple of times. The police were not very helpful about directing the runners either. Twice I had to ask which way to turn as I approached corners. One runner I spoke with after the race missed a turn. During the race, a police man told me I had made a right turn down the wrong street. Some turn markers would have been nice. The street I turned down ran parallel to the correct street but the confusion certainly didn't help my time.

I hope to run the 5K at the Charlotte Thunder Road Marathon in December. Overall my time of 22:52 was good for a ninth place finish overall and 3rd in my age group so I'll take it and start training for my next race.