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2010 Jamba Juice Banana Man Chase 5K

Here's how I trained for the 2010 Jamba Juice Banana Man Chase 5K. The big news--I won a year's supply of Jamba Juice again! The top 3 finishers in each age division get 26 coupons for free smoothies. My goal was to finish at least under 18:00 again, and hopefully beat last year's time of 17:08, which was my personal best. Since I'm training for the big race in October, I didn't do too much speed work before this race. I finished in 17:03. I was 15th overall, and 3rd in my age division (30-39--a bunch of fast guys!). Also, Ayanna ran this race. She finished in 32:00--8 seconds better than last year! And Jonah ran the Keiki Fun Run 1k and finished in just over 6 minutes--a great job too, way faster than last year!

Complete results here.

I wanted to run between 5:20-5:25 per mile to make sure to beat last year's time. My first mile was at 5:23, which isn't too bad since the start of the race has lots of traffic. There are a few sharp turns in the first few hundred meters, so it's a bit packed. My second mile was exactly 6 minutes, and I was perturbed with myself for taking it so easy. I was running even with an older guy, and thought our pace was good, but obviously I had lost some. I knew that I'd have to pick it up significantly to beat last year's time. A 5k is 3.11 miles, so taking that into consideration I was pleasantly surprised with my finishing time. The last 1.11 mile I did in 5:40, which means my mile time was around 5:09 or so. Woohoo!

As I was recovering at the finish, another guy crossed the finish line and came up to me. "Are you 50s?" he asked. I wasn't sure what he meant, until he asked what age group I was in--he wanted to see if he got the free jamba juice for his age group. So, I figure I no longer look like a young kid anymore; that's the first time someone thought I was in my 50s!

Some pictures:

Jonah finishes strong!

The kids enjoy their free smoothie after the race.

Another year's worth of Jamba Juice!

Ayanna's breakfast of champions!

Jonah's breakfast of champions!

Note: The decimal places are seconds, not hundredths of minutes. It was too hard to figure out how to do seconds in Excel (of course, what do you expect from Microsoft products?). So, for example, if you see 20.50, that means 20 minutes and 50 seconds, and not 20 minutes and 30 seconds.