Run Auckland - Western Springs 5K

Sunday was Race 4 in the Run Auckland series, this week at Western Springs in central Auckland.  It was my third 5k race of the winter.

My training has been going well in recent weeks and with the course being a pretty flat two lap circuit of the Western Springs lake I was reasonably confident of  a good time, though I hadn't set myself a goal time for some reason.

Being the middle of winter and with a early race start time of 8:00am the temperature was in the low single figures and though I went for a warm up run of  a half mile or so it was very hard to actually get warm.

Come the race start and I placed myself reasonably near the front of the field, having placed 15th and 14th male in the two previous events.

After a reasonably quick start all the runners soon settled into their rightful places and I settled into a comfortable pace that I was able to maintain for the first few k's  completing the first lap in a time of 11:45.  During the second lap I was still feeling good and was able to maintain that pace and even slightly pick it up overtaking a couple of other runners in the process.

I was very pleased to cross the line in a time of 23:16, 11th male overall (of 37) and 3rd male 40-49 (of 10). I ran the second lap in 11:31.

It was a pleasing result and I think shows I'm on the right track with my programme of three training runs a week combined with some cross training including weights , swimming or biking.

Looking ahead I will run two more 5 k over the next six weeks but continuing to build base mileage in training. I also have just entered a 10K race in late August.

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