Ed's Race Recap: Olympisch Stadionloop voor Unicef 5k

After all the excitement yesterday, I was a bit nervous that the second half of our weekend couldn't live up.  However, it turned out quite well!  We awoke to a gorgeous, blue sky (something that doesn't happen too often here!) and, after a quick breakfast, biked down to the Olympisch Stadion for the shortest race we've done since May's Chase Corporate Challenge in Chicago.  I was excited to get a time for a proper 5k (the Corporate Challenge is 3.5 miles) while Amelie was dreading having to run fast around some tight corners.

The course turned out to be pretty awesome, with only a couple of tight turns and just one brief stretch of uneven brick cobblestones.  And, we got to both start and end in the Olympic Stadium!  It's really fun to run on the same track that hosted the Olympics, so many years ago.  Here's the course, courtesy of my Garmin watch.  You can see my office if you know where to look!

As you can see, I finished in 19:02 (19:03 according to the official race time, but my watch is clearly more accurate.  It has GPS, after all!)  That was good for 11th place overall - not too shabby!  I'd hoped to break 19:00, but this is still a new PR!  (On a side note, I've been in Amsterdam for three months, and set a new PR in each of them; 10 miles in 1:06:55 (the Dam tot Damloop, September), Half Marathon (13.1 miles) in 1:33:28 (the Amsterdam Halve Marathon, October), and now this 5k.)

Here are my 1km splits based on the "replay" function of Garmin Connect (so they're a bit rough):

Stadionloop 5K: November 11, 2012
km	Time	km Split
1	3:34	3:34
2	7:25	3:51
3	11:06	3:41
4	14:53	3:47
5	19:03	4:10

Interesting that I slowed up in the second K.  I wonder if this is just an artifact of the estimated data or a real drop off.  By 5k pacing can use some work, either way!

Amelie did even better, placing 1st in the women's division!  Gladly, she didn't outright beat me in this race though.  More on her race to come, in her words.  We also got some great action shots of us crossing the finish line:

Look! No feet!

Great effort across the line!

After our race, we stayed to watch the start of the 10k, then went down to the Amsterdamse Bos to watch some of the 10k and just enjoy the sunny day.  We even stopped to take some pictures of the pretty scenery.

Clearly, we were both eager to continue moving on when we weren't taking pictures!

The lovely day was a great second half to an action packed and fun weekend.  And it was just what we needed to break up the rain and overcast that is so common!