High Speeds

Murray Fun Days 5K

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Location:

Provo,UT,USA

Member Since:

Mar 01, 2004

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

World Class

Running Accomplishments:

PRs 14:47 5 K (Portland Twilight), 1:06:33 (Utah Valley Half Marathon (aided)).

As a 14 year old in 2013: 4:31.58 1500. 9:35:32 3000m (Utah Youth boys state record). 17:01 5K (Draper Days). 1:15:21 half (Utah Valley (aided)).

 

Short-Term Running Goals:

Get the marathon under 2:20.

Long-Term Running Goals:

Make it to the Olympics in the marathon. Keep training throughout my life.

Personal:

 I have five brothers and five sisters,
all younger. I'm currently a PhD Student in the CSEM (computational science) program at UT Austin. Married, no kids (yet). I've been dealing with some issues in running the last few years, and am trying to get back into top shape.  

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Race: Murray Fun Days 5K (3.107 Miles) 00:15:35, Place overall: 1, Place in age division: 1
Total Distance
16.00

 I've always found the name "Murray Fun Days" rather ironic. The course is anything but fun - with a late 8 AM start, direct July sunlight, and about 1.5 miles of uphill :-). I ended up getting about the time I expected - 15:35 or about 5:00 average per mile. The pacing was even too - 4:58, 5:01, and then 6:36 for the last 1.1 miles to the end. That ended up being good enough for first. I've won 5K's before, but this was the first one with a police motorcycle escort, so that was cool :-).

I felt like the limiting factor for me was the same as in Utah Valley - this imbalance between the right and left legs. It felt like I was going to trip if I went any faster. I could tell some stabilizer muscles in the left leg were doing more than their fair share of work - and when they tired out I couldn't speed up past 5:00. I felt like I had the muscle power and glycogen to do it, but the legs wouldn't cooperate - kinda like a car with a good engine but misaligned wheels or messed up transmission.

I've been seeing a physical therapist at a place called Fyzical (would recommend). That's been helping for sure - I've been able to hit some great times in the last few months - but there is still some monkey business going on that's keeping me from 100% performance. Today the exact same thing happened as in Utah Valley - I wanted to go faster and felt like I had the juice, but the monkey business got in the way.

In any case - happy with the result and excited to see what the future holds! Next race is Des News (half).

 

 

 

Comments
From steve ash on Sun, Jul 04, 2021 at 20:53:34 from 174.52.121.51

Congratulations Benjamin! Hope you can get these imbalances corrected.

From Rob Murphy on Mon, Jul 05, 2021 at 09:57:15 from 67.177.30.39

Great Race!

I switched from Murray to the Sandy Classic a few years ago for that exact reason - hated the Murray course. Sandy is an hour earlier so cooler, more interesting course, and cheaper.The competition is better at Murray though but that doesn't mean that much to me anymore now that I'm slow.

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