At the beginning of 2004 I resolved to run a 5K under 20 minutes and to also finish ahead of my younger brother while doing so. I circled May 8th, 2004 on my calendar which was the date of the Apple Blossom 5K in Bartlett, Illinois. This would be only my second race having run my first 5K on the same course in 2003 as I wrote about in my last post. At my inaugural 5K, my brother had served as my pacer and motivator. He would still be my motivation in 2004, but this time I wanted him to eat my dust while aiming to take more than 5 minutes off my 5K PR.
I’ve always been competitive and maybe that was a result of having only one other sibling. That said, my brother and I had our own niches as we grew up. We both loved sports, but I was more drawn to tennis and marching band, while my brother was good at baseball, basketball, and exceptional at running. His mile time of 4:24, 2 mile of 9:28, and 5K of 15:30 put him in the elite tier of cross country and track runners in the state of Illinois. So, when I say I wanted to leave him in the dust, let’s say that I knew that was a stretch goal. 12 years had passed since he graduated from high school, but I had no doubt he would find his speed once he accepted my challenge.
We both signed up for the May race and began our training in February. We never ran together, but in addition to logging our weekly easy run mileage we both agreed to run a simulated 5K time trial every Saturday to gauge how we were improving. This served as our speed work and also for me was a barometer both for whether I was on track to break the 20 minutes barrier and how I was measuring up to my competition.
February and March can be quite cold in Chicago, as well as snowy and slippery outside, so our weekly 5K time trials were performed indoors on treadmills. I had purchased my first treadmill around Christmas and my brother was using one at Lifetime Fitness where he was a member. I’ll have a future post about treadmills or what many in the running community refer to as dreadmills, but for me, as long as I have a TV in front of me, I can literally run for hours on a treadmill. I had read in Runner’s World that in order to account for the lack of wind resistance on a treadmill, you should keep the incline set to 1.5%, so I made sure to do that for all of my indoor running.
In the weeks leading up to the May 8th race, my brother would run his time trial and I would run my time trial and then we would compare notes. Every week, I would improve by about 30 seconds, but every week, my time trial would be about 1 minute slower than my brother’s. It was quite uncanny. We both improved by the same amount week after week, but I stayed about the same distance behind him. I kept in mind that he was a seasoned veteran with an established track record (pun intended) while I was a relative newbie and that finishing ahead of him was truly a stretch goal. My main objective really was to break the 20 minute barrier, and I could feel myself getting closer. In fact, the week before the race my 5K time trial on my treadmill at home was just under 20 minutes, and yes my brother again was about a minute faster than I was. The question though was whether road racing would be the same or harder as running on the treadmill.
On May 8th, 2004, the weather definitely cooperated with us. The temperature was in the 50s, the sun was out, and there was just a light breeze. It was a great day for a race. I had not yet purchased a garmin watch, but the course was marked at each mile which also included a timing clock so I would have a good sense of how fast I was going only after the first mile. The butterflies I felt were very strong and my adrenaline was at its peak as the gun went off to start the race. I would later read in Runner’s World that it’s a common mistake to go out too fast in a 5K race as everyone’s collective pent-up energy is let loose, but I had not read that warning yet and without a GPS to guide me I fell victim to a very fast start and my brother was right there with me.
I had formulated a race plan based on my sub 20 minute goal and my time trials on the treadmill. In order to run a 5K which is 3.1 miles, you need to keep an average pace of about 6 minutes and 27 seconds per mile. In my trials, I had found that I could run about 5 seconds faster than that pace in the first mile, take it easier in the 2nd mile running about 5 seconds slower than 5K goal pace, and then pushing hard for the third mile and really going hard for that last tenth of a mile. The key would be not to go out too fast and burning out.
My brother and I were running side by side for that first mile, and I started to get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that warned me that I was going too fast. Sure enough, as we turned a corner on that neighborhood course, and the first mile marker came into view I could see why. We crossed that first mile in 5 minutes and 50 seconds! That was 30 seconds faster than I had planned to run the first mile. I knew there was no way I could keep that pace for another 2.1 miles, so I backed off a bit. My brother must have been feeling some discomfort as well because he dropped behind me after the first mile no longer at my side.
During the second mile I was still pushing, but I was also making sure that the feeling in the pit of my stomach stayed at bay. I kept to my strategy of the second mile being the easiest and made sure I would have some reserves in the tank for the final 1.1 miles. I didn’t dare to look behind me for my brother but just imagined that he was playing with me and would surge at any moment. As I crossed the 2 mile mark the clock showed 12 minutes and 50 seconds. I had now run a 7 minute second mile, but I was still on track for my goal of breaking 20 minutes as my average pace was 6 minutes and 25 seconds for the first two miles which was still 2 seconds ahead of my goal pace. Now the question in my mind was whether I could speed back up in the last mile and finish strong.
During the third mile I pushed harder. I continued to run imagining the whole time that my brother was right behind me and about to overtake me. The year before, he was there at my side encouraging me at my first 5K race as I worked to reach my goal of breaking 25 minutes in the 5K. This year, in that third mile, while I didn’t see him, I imagined him on my heels ready to get the last laugh in our sibling rivalry as he passed me at the finish. The thought kept me going and pushing. The feeling in the pit of my stomach had gone away as I slowed during the second mile and even as I turned up the speed during the third mile the feeling did not return. If I was pacing correctly, I had a good chance of reaching my objective and running under 20 minutes.
As I hit the third mile marker there wasn’t a clock, so I just turned up the speed knowing there was only a tenth of a mile left to go. I was sure that my brother was about to turn it up as well and would pass me at any moment. I was running frantically and somewhat fearfully as if an attacker was just behind me. The finish line came into view, and I gave it all I had. I saw the clock at the finish and felt a sense of elation as it grew nearer and realized that I was going to reach the finish before the clock turned to 20:00. In fact, I crossed the finish line in 19 minutes and 49 seconds, and then I quickly turned around to look for my brother, but I didn’t see him.
I wound about waiting for about one and a half minutes before he crossed the finish line finishing with a time just over 21 minutes. It turns out that first mile did hit him hard too, and he wasn’t able to recover. Still, I was a bit puzzled about how this result had happened. Sure, I was definitely excited that I had broken the 20 minute barrier and had run faster than my brother in the process. What about all those time trials though that we had run leading up to the race where he was always one minute faster than I was even as we both improved week after week? Sure, it could have been the fact that you never know how you will feel on race day, but I had this feeling there was another reason.
I don’t remember now if it was that day that I talked to my brother about the treadmills or whether it was sometime shortly after the race, but I did ask him some details about his treadmill training as a hypothesis formed in my mind. I mentioned above that I always ran on a 1.5% incline on my treadmill to simulate wind resistance. I asked my brother what incline he ran his time trials on at his gym and his response was that he ran at 0% incline. That had to be it! Regardless, I had won the race between the two of us. Never in my years of running have I even come close to the fast times that my brother has run. At my age now, I’m past my peak and never will, but for one day in 2004 I was a little bit faster than he was, and more importantly for me, I broke the 20 minute barrier for the 5K.
