update

After the last place finish, I was not eager to race again but Guito-san, the head of my running club, convinced me to give it another shot. First he said to just come and watch, and then he changed it to just run the first 2k of the 5k race. He said it was totally ok to drop out once I passed the 2k mark. Somehow this seemed reasonable to me that day, so I agreed to do it. Actually my "secret" plan was try to run 90 sec. pace and then drop if I went over that pace. I managed to stay close to 90 sec. race the whole 5k and finished in 18:51, just 6 sec. over 90 pace for the entire distance.

Race 2

With my confidence somewhat restored I decided to run another 5k track race in the beginning of July just before I returned to the U.S. for vacation. July in Japan is quite hot and at race time it was 95 degrees and humid. Before the race I went on a warm-up and it was quite brutal. In my warm-up I was dying and I thought there was no way I would run well. Thankfully I did a pretty long warm-up of 25 minutes and I think it helped me somehow.

There were two heats of the 5k and fortunately I was placed in the slower heat. But I still had no idea how fast the other runners were and what to expect in the race. The gun went off and after 200 meters I was surprisingly in third place. Honestly I was shocked. I then moved into first through no real effort of my own but just because the other runners slowed down. In the past when I have led races I pushed the pace and I would try to break away, but in this race because of the heat I just tried to maintain. I knew that I couldn't pick up the pace at all. Unfortunately a younger guy, about 30yrs old, passed me and opened up a gap. At that point I was quite pleased to be in second so I just tried to hang on to my place. For the last mile I could hear a teammate on my heals. I could hear the sound of his footsteps very close so I was a bit worried. With 400 meters to go I picked uo the pace a bit and kicked it in for a second place finish.

I was very pleased with the race. I haven't finished that high in a track race in a long time and I thought I never would again so it was a great surprise.