R and J in the USA

December 28, 2024

While the name Luau 5K suggests a festive gathering amidst a lush tropical landscape, the race was a low-key assembly in a suburban park in Pflugerville, Texas. Not to be confused with a flugelhorn, Pflugerville is a suburb of Austin south of Round Rock, Texas. While the setting was more hominy grit than poi, it was still fun, and was a nice way to kick off a Saturday morning.

The Luau 5K, 10K, and half marathon is a monthly racing series organized by US Road Running, an organization that puts on small, local, family-friendly race series, most of which are held monthly at the same park location. They also support various causes. Each month US Road Running Race Club selects a charity to support. December’s charity is Team Red, White, & Blue. Team Red, White, & blue is a community of Veterans, Service Members, military families, and supporters united by teamwork, shared values, and a common goal of health and wellness.

The course was a two lap out and back that began on a dirt and gravel loop through an open park field and continued on a paved recreational path along a creek, traversing some mild ups and downs but no real hills along the way.

The two laps of the out and back resulted in three turnarounds. The downside of the turnarounds is that they were jarring. Most out and back courses we’ve done have a loop at the turnaround. However tight that loop may be, it enables one to maintain a stride during the 180 degree pivot. This course had no such loop. It had a cone at which you had to turn on a dime to reverse course. It was more like the end of swimming pool lap than a running lap, but without the ability to do a flip turn to maintain momentum. You had to stop and turn around, which broke the running flow and used up a little extra energy. The upside of having three turnarounds was that we got to cross paths and high five each other three times.

This was among our smaller races. 44 people toed the starting line, 23 of which competed in the 5K, 12 in the 10K, and 9 in the half marathon.

It was also among our slower races. The overall winner came in at 20:38. That’s decent – a 6:39 per mile pace – but not blazing. It was clear from seeing the winner on the course that he is capable of going faster. This was confirmed in talking with him after the race. We learned that he was using this race as a training run for an upcoming marathon and ultramarathon. We also learned that he’s done a 1:17 half marathon. That’s a sub-6:00 per mile pace over 13.1 miles, so he clearly has a faster 5K in him.

Julie finished the race a champion as the first overall female to cross the finish line, and was 7^th place overall. Ryan was the 6^th male and 6^th finisher overall. He did manage to edge out Julie in one prominent category. He was the 4^th oldest person in the race, while Julie was only the 7^th oldest.

Full results here.

Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds

There is not all that much to report for this race. We both got in a decent amount of casual, easy running in the intervening couple of weeks since our last race in New Mexico. We both came into the race planning to take it fairly easy. Julie basically had a repeat of her Arizona race that she wrote about in her “A View from Inside” post where she reverted back to old bad habits. Instead of remembering that no matter how easy a first mile feels, she absolutely has to run the first mile like a jog and not a run in order to maintain for 3 miles and get her negative splits. Unlike regular training where you slowly work up to an A race and your race pace is usually 1 minute/mile faster than your easy run pace, when we are having 5K races every week or so, Julie has learned that she has to run her easy pace for the first mile and a half. It wasn’t like that in the first 10 states or so, but that is what it is like now. This time, though, her internal world was fairly quiet and her drive to compete was taking a nap – she just felt too zen coming off of 3 days on the beach. She clocked in an 8:48 for miles 1 and 2 and then just didn’t feel like pushing it in mile 3 even though her heart rate was doing just fine at an average of 144. Her calves were talking a little bit for the first time in 2 or 3 weeks and she just didn’t have the drive to do anything more than enjoy the race, so she took two short water breaks in mile 3 bring her mile 3 pace up to a 9:37 since she didn’t attempt to make up for the walking breaks with any increased push in mile 3. Competitively speaking, somehow, with a fairly slow time of 28:29, she still managed to take the spot of the first female to cross the 5K finish line. There were definitely females ahead of her running the 10K, but she claimed the modest victory in this small 5K field. A nice little token on top of a lovely, relaxed and enjoyable race

As for Ryan, the detailed race report is as simple as it gets. He went out for a jog and finished in 25:25. He would finish 3 minutes before Julie, but Julie was the one that would get to walk away with a medal this time around.

When the race was over, we felt as casual and relaxed as when it started and enjoyed our lovely morning jog in Pflugerville.