I ran the 11th annual Manhattan Beach 5K on Saturday, June 23, 2012. Although I had been aware of this race for a few weeks I wasn’t sure whether I was going to run it because I didn’t know if I was going to wake up on time and be energetic enough to do it since it started at 7 AM, about an hour earlier than most races, and I live about a 30 to 40 minute drive away from Manhattan Beach. However, I did wake up early enough and made it to Manhattan Beach ten minutes before the start of the race which was just enough time to register, run back to my car to drop off my shirt and shoes, and make it back to the start line seconds before the gun. This was the second race in a row where I barely made it on time. I think I’ll try to arrive earlier at my next race.

This race was on the beach during low tide, so I ran it barefoot, my first time running a race barefoot. I had previously run a couple of 5K races on the sand and wore shoes and both times regretted it afterwards. This time after having spent a few months running in the minimalist Five Fingers shoes which is sort of like being barefoot and having run three races in them the thought of wearing shoes didn’t even occur to me. Barefoot was definitely the way to go and I would like to run more races in the sand without shoes. I’m not sure if I would try it on the pavement or street where there could be broken glass, however.

My time fell over forty seconds short of my personal best for a 5K. Since I was admittedly not in peak shape and probably didn’t get enough sleep the previous night, I wasn’t expecting to beat my time anyway. I was glad though that I finished in less than 24 minutes. There was a guy I was running parallel with most of the second half of the race, a teenager I think. I was keeping up and was going to try to beat him at the finish but he ended up beating me by one second.

Anyway, here’s how I did:

Overall: 47 out of 315
Men: 42 out of 167
M 30-34: 4 out of 15
Finish: 23:57 (minutes:seconds)
Pace: 7:44 (minutes:seconds per mile)