March 23, 2025
It was back to school again for our Alabama 5K. Our 47th 5K of this trip was our 7th run on a college campus. This was the largest and most prominent of them. The previous six traipsed through small and mid-sized regional colleges and universities. The Alpha Chi Omega 5K for DVA unfolded on the campus of 30,000 student, R1 research university, Division I athletic stalwart Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama.
The optimism of a sunny spring weekend morning on a college campus and the energy of hundreds of students gathering for a good cause generated a crowd of relaxed, smiling people. We almost failed to join that crowd.
When attempting to sign up on Friday evening for the Sunday morning race, we discovered we had overlooked the registration deadline. Oops. We were disappointed, as we had been looking forward to running through the Auburn campus, and we had planned our itinerary around the event. Hoping to salvage the race, and to avoid the itinerary adjustments missing it would require, Julie emailed the race coordinator. She told the coordinator about our trip with its 5K in every state, acknowledged that it was our fault for missing the deadline, and asked if it would be possible to still run the race. The race coordinator, Emily, generously accommodated us.
We sought out Emily after the race to thank her and found an impressive person working with an impressive team. These college students put on an event that was better organized and coordinated – and more fun – than many of the 5Ks we’ve run throughout our trip. Emily was on the ball. In addition to organizing the event while carrying a full academic load, she delivered top-notch race-day management.
And it was all for a good cause. The race was organized by Auburn’s Alpha Chi Omega Sorority to promote awareness, education, and prevention of domestic violence. 100% of event proceeds will be donated to the Alpha Chi Omega Foundation and the Domestic Violence Intervention Center of Opelika.
The course took us around the athletic facilities and other non-academic areas of the Auburn campus amidst small rolling hills – including one mid-race incline that made us work a bit. Beginning and ending in the shadow of storied Jordan-Hare Stadium, the aura of big-time college athletics permeated as we ran past the statues of Heisman Trophy winners Pat Sullivan, Bo Jackson, and Cam Newton, and past the arena where Charles Barkley and Chuck Person played college hoops.
Julie finished 72nd of 367 runners overall and was the 42nd female finisher. Ryan finished 10th overall and was the 7th male finisher.
You can watch Ryan stride to his finish line here. You can watch Julie finish with her smokin’ kick here.
[Note: Though advertised as a 5K, the course clocked in at 3.0 miles instead of 3.1 miles. As a result, times and paces listed in the results are faster than they would be for a full 5K.]
Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds
It was a beautiful day for a run, and our race fit right in with that. We both started and finished strong and left the race feeling as good, or better, than when we started.
After eight days of being under the weather, and two heavy and tired races prior to that, Julie crossed the finish line feeling great. Coming on the heels of three races where that was not the case, she felt fantastic about that.
With zero running or exercising of any kind during the week, Julie came into the race rested and recovered from being sick. For the first time in a while, Julie joined Ryan in his pre-race warm up, and it boded well for her. When first starting to warm up, Julie thought she might be headed for another heavy, plodding race. Fortunately, it turned out to be just a matter of shaking off the cobwebs.
When the race started, Julie noticed a return of a feeling she hadn’t felt since our Georgia race – strength. There is, perhaps, no greater feeling in a race than when you start running at the beginning and can feel, to your bones, that you have the strength and fitness to do the whole thing. When that strong feeling remains throughout the race, it is absolutely delightful. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still hurt, or that you are not still working hard. This feeling of strength that is separate from all of that. We both have noticed it after ten months of near constant 5King. It’s a nice feeling.
Julie was happy to have the feeling of strength back. Still, she opted not to push that feeling and risk overdrawing on it. Her intention was to go right on that edge between jogging and running – a pace that definitely felt like work, but not a single micron of effort more than what it took to just get over that line. She came into the race having no idea what she would feel or how to approach it pace-wise. So, she opted to focus on perceived level of effort and not give much attention to pace for this particular outing. Her main goal was not a particular speed, but just to stay running strong. That landed her at a nice, easy 9:20 for mile 1.
Mile 2 brought with it a serious hill.
Throughout the race, Julie was loving the total absence of the question of whether her Mile 1 pace was too optimistic and would leave her drained in Mile 3, as she had experienced so many times. She knew with every step she ran that she would easily be able to run that fast or faster as the miles progressed. She spent the race reveling in that strength and knowing.
After conquering a long hill in Mile 2, a solid left turn led to an even steeper stretch. Julie wasn’t running the race to get negative splits. Still, if it weren’t for that Mile 2 hill, she knew she surely could have. So, might it have happened that, after running a bit slower on the hills, Julie picked up the speed at the end of Mile 2 to maybe try and grab a negative split? Yes. That might have happened. Might she have pushed the final quarter of Mile 2 down to 7:30-8:00 minutes per mile to try to counter the slow uphill and drop her Mile 2 time below 9:20, running significantly faster than that nice strong and steady pace she had intended to maintain? Yes. Yes, she might have done so. Mile 2 came in at a 9:21, just one second away from that tempting negative split. Alas.
When mile 3 started on a nice flat path, Julie reset to that nice “just above jogging pace”. After the end of her Mile 2 push, that easy pace had slowed down into the upper nines. But the strength was still there, and that’s all Julie cared about for this particular race. As the mile went on, Julie’s legs loosened up and she settled back into an easy 9:20-9:30 pace. This particular 5K was on track to clock in at only 3 miles, missing the extra 0.1. As Julie rounded the corner for what would end up being the last 0.4 miles, it was all uphill. Julie had plenty of gas left and picked up the pace in the uphill, finishing on a gentle sprint. Mile 3 clocked in at 9:15. Julie crossed the finish line with a big smile on strong and happy legs.
Ryan had himself a good race too. When he started this one, he wasn’t sure what he was going to choose as his “don’t go slower than” time, though he knew he wasn’t going to try to tear it up. He started out and settled into a pace that felt decent. He had decided he wasn’t going to run his race with much concern about anyone else. Once the race settled in after the first quarter of a mile, though, he saw that the people out front weren’t going to be tearing it up too much either. He then thought, well I want to at least keep the front of the pack in sight.
He had been expecting a lot of people to pass him at the beginning, even if they weren’t able keep their early pace up. That’s usually how it goes in a large race. A lot of people burst out of the starting line, and a lot of them trail off. In this race, however, there weren’t all that many people ahead of him right from the get-go – few enough for him to track. He counted them to keep track so he could know where he was in the pack as he passed people. That number went from twelve to sixteen to twenty in the first three quarters of a mile. By the end, the number fell to nine.
His first mile clocked in at a 7:16, and he felt nice and easy doing it. In the Mile 2 uphill stretch, he slowed to over an 8:00 per mile pace. (Julie got up to over 11 minutes per mile during that same stretch and would have considered 8 minute miles to be all out sprinting.) After the Mile 2 uphill, he found himself running 7:10’s while feeling the same level of perceived effort.
Ryan’s watch clocked his finish at 21:30, which would have been his fastest race of the trip had the course been a full 3.12 miles. Like Julie, however, his watch showed that the course was short by about a tenth of a mile. On a full 5K course, his average pace of 7:16 would have landed him about even with some of his fastest races of the trip. So, when all is said and done, he’s not quite ready to claim he broke 22:00, but it’s still another one for the books of solid races.
We both finished the race the same way we started and maybe even a little better for it, feeling solid and strong, which was the name of the game for our Auburn University run.
R and J in the USA 
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