This weekend I ran the 31st Annual Make Tracks for the Zoo 5k. This is my recap.

This was my fifth year running this particular race and I love it. The course is usually the same, but I don’t mind that too much because Forest Park is SO pretty and getting a free little breakfast in the Zoo afterwards isn’t too shabby either.

For the past week, I’ve been battling a head cold complete with super fun sinus congestion. I had an appointment with my allergy doctor on Thursday, and she said that she didn’t think it was bad enough to warrant any kind of medicine and to basically just tough it out. So after my appointment, I stopped by the grocery store and proceeded to by a bunch of Naked Power-C juices and took a eucalyptus steam shower to try to get my congestion moving. Shockingly, I think both these things worked pretty well for me. By Sunday, I still had some nose snots and a nice drainage cough going on, but I felt decent enough to actually run the race.

Usually I have my packet mailed to me, but they raised the price to $14 and I figured I could just pick it up before hand since it’s never taken me very long to do so the few times I had done that. Um, wrong. The line was crazy long, because I guess everyone else felt the same way about the price increase for mailing the packet as I did. They actually had to delay the start of the race a few minutes to allow everyone time to get their stuff and get down there. As a result, I wound up being in the VERY back of the pack.

Once the race got started, I managed to get across the start line and fall into a pretty decent pace and I was feeling pretty good. However, I did have to bob and weave around a lot of people going slower, which is my own fault since I didn’t plan ahead a little better. I figured the congestion would ease up and I’d be able to cruise along pretty easily after the first mile.

I clocked a decent for me pace for the first mile, considering my snot-nose situation and hit a pace of 14:25/mile. But the crowds never really dissipated and some how no matter which part of the road I moved to, I was still having to bob and weave around A LOT of walkers. My second mile was a little slower than I would have liked, coming in at 15:14/mile, and I was starting to feel the effects of running with a head cold.

I walked a little bit in mile two and a lot more than I wanted to in mile three, simply because I was just not feeling it. I was coughing and constantly wiping my nose and just ready to be done with everything, in general. There was a lady running near me that had applied her perfume with a little too much gusto that morning. I get wanting to smell nice, but when I can literally taste your perfume and you’re 10 feet away from me, I think you went a little heavy on the fragrance. Mile three came in at 16:11/mile. So not the best performance.

I hadn’t run since my half marathon back in April, and I’ve only been hitting yoga sporadically since coming back from Italy. Clearly I need to get back with the program and stop being such a slacker!

I will say though, that this is my best performance at this race with my previous fastest time being 49:00 even back in 2013. I didn’t set a new overall PR, but I did complete this race in 48:50, so 10 whole seconds faster! Woot woot! I think if I would have been a) feeling better and b) a little more prepared, my race would have possibly been a new PR. But luck next time though!