This was my second ever 5K, after the SAM’s 5K in December, which I finished at an inspiring 11:03 per mile pace. This was, in fact, the fastest pace I’ve done a run at.

Until today.

This event is held at Ala Moana Beach Park, or rather, mostly around Ala Moana Beach Park. It is totally flat, just like the SAM’s which is at Kapi’olani Park. I ran with three of my Twitter buddies (the ever present @AlohaJohn leading the way, of course) and another was around somewhere but sight unseen.

It’s also a charitable event, with proceeds going to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

I followed essentially the same strategy for this 800-1000 runner race that I’ve been using for awhile–go by heart rate. The only alteration was that my experience riding the Hale’iwa Metric Century taught me that I could go for a relatively long time at a higher heart rate than I previously thought, meaning that 170 was not an outrageous number to see on a heart rate monitor.

As usual, I started off a lot slower than those around me, but also as usual, as time went on, I started passing people. Keeping my heart rate at 157 or so for the majority of the time, then up in the 160s-170 for the last mile until I saw the finish line and just sprinted, I was just hoping for a time less than 12 minutes per mile.

Instead, I finished at a 10:39 pace, which is not just a personal record 5K, it’s the fastest pace I’ve ever done at any event.

So is my heart rate monitor based training working? We’ll discuss that in another episode.
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