Races are just starting to come back, but they look very different. Masks in the starting area, no water on the course, no family at the end. I appreciate the effort, but I haven’t been tempted back yet. I have been training, though, and my coach has set a couple of 5k time trials this spring to gauge my fitness level. I ran the first one yesterday and it went… okay.

Time trials are hard. You’re alone so you have to do all the mental work yourself. There are no pacers, no people to chase or push you. If you doubt your effort or strength on that day, there aren’t on course distractions to pull you back. As you can tell, I don’t like them that much.

The prep was easy. I picked a lightly trafficked stretch of country road near my house. It’s mostly flat, with a few rises to vary the terrain just enough. I set my run as an “out and back” so I just had to make one turn and didn’t need to worry about creating or remembering a course.

Yesterday had good weather, aside from a slight headwind on the back portion. I felt good, and did my warm-ups. Even though I was alone, I still felt some jitters (which felt familiar). I lined up, counted down, and then it was time to press go on the watch and take off.

I started too fast, but pulled my pace back and settled into a rhythm that felt hard but right. First mile down in 6:17. The second mile I felt unsure, and probably let off the gas a bit. I try to go by feel these days and not check the pace on my watch, but I glanced down too much and tried to figure out how I was doing.

I made the turn and started back, but worried a lot. Would I be able to keep the pace up? Was I going too slow? Should I be pushing harder. Second mile down in 6:37. When I saw that, I worried and started glancing at the pace on my watch even more. I tried to move my legs faster, but the wind picked up and when the pace didn’t move, or slowed down, I started to feel discouraged.

I pushed up and over rise, knowing I only had one more to go. My legs had tired, and my breathing was labored, less calm that I wanted it to be. Pushing over the last rise I kept glancing at the pace, hoping to see it drift down and trying to forecast my time. Third mile down in 6:27.

The math in a 5k always throws me off. I can loosely figure out how I will come out of the third mile, but I don’t know how to translate the time I need to cover the last 100m. Somehow, it always takes longer than I think. I saw telephone pole that passed for my finish line up ahead and tried to increase my turnover. “Maybe I could break 20 minutes,” I thought… I hoped. There’s nothing special about that barrier, but it would feel good to break it. So I crossed the line, hit the stop button on my watch, and came to a halt. I looked down at my time and saw 20:02:52, just over the line.

For whatever reason, I felt discouraged. I had run a 5k on the track in December, clocking a 20:09, so I had improved. And in truth, I only started worrying about a goal in the last mile of the trial so it seemed strange to feel like I let myself down. I have run under 19 minutes before on hillier courses so I wondered if age was catching up to me or that I haven’t been training well.

Those faster times were in races, though, and I remember thinking a lot less in them. They were also not at the end of a long year in quarantine and in the middle of a stressful time at work. I’m being less hard on myself today, as it should be.

I have more of these check-in’s to improve my time, and this served as a good reminder of how nice it will feel to be on a real starting line again one day. Racing in a crowd is taxing, too, but it comes with an energy and pressure to perform that can help push you farther than you can on your own. I look forward to feeling that again.