Racing At Altitude

I woke up this morning bright and early to run in a charity 5k in Quito. I´ve done a few interval workouts at altitude, but no real racing. The morning was quite nice, though as usual, the weather was a bit crazy. I warmed up in sweat pants, an overshirt, and a hat and by the time the race started, I was in just a singlet and shorts. And I was hot. Oh my.

Well, the race went okay. I did my usual pre-race routine. 2 miles real slow, followed by striders about 5 to 10 minutes before the race. Luckily, I got a pretty good spot on the line, it was basically first come first serve, and (no offense), there were a few women right on the front of the line. In a race of a few thousand, there´s really no reason for that... But it was chip timed, so it didn´t really matter.


Anyways, there were a few anxious minutes on the line and then the gun. I got off pretty well. I had told myself that I wasn´t going to get caught up in the undoubtedly crazy start of a bunch of people who thinkg they´re a lot faster than they are. And I didn´t. A minute or so into the race, I was probably barely in the top 100. About 95% of these people were going to run out of gas before the first kilometer mark. The other 5% were incredibly fit univeristy runners who live and train here in Quito.

So, by the 1 mile mark, I had passed a good 80 or so people. There was a pack of about 8 runners about 20 seconds in front of me. I was able to close this gap and eventually pass most of this group. I couldn´t see the leader(s) for most of the race, so I didn´t know exactly where I was place-wise. I felt like I was going at a pretty good clip and I passed the 3 mile mark right around 17:10, I think. I didn´t have too much left, but was able to kick a bit and catch about 2 more runners in the last hundred meters or so.


I came in around 17:38, not sure of the exact time. A bit slower than the 17:20 that Jon had told me to aim for, but all in all, not too bad. I was also in the top 10 (I got a little medal) which was exciting.

Overall, a time that´s about 40 seconds faster than I could run at sea level last year is not bad, especially given that I didn´t really taper at all (did a 14 miler on Thursday). So, yeah, not so bad.