Carlsbad 5000 – What Makes It So Fast?

The Carlsbad 5000 claims to be the “world’s fastest 5K,” and having raced this 5K road race yesterday I can say that it is very fast. I ran a PR of 15:12, more than a half minute faster than my previous best road time of 15:51. During the race I think I also set a PR in every distance from the 40 yard dash all the way to 5K – the race started in a dead sprint for the first turn, I ran through the mile in the front group in 4:42, hit two miles at 9:40, and three miles around 14:42. In retrospect it was a lot of fun to run the race in that manner (red lining from the gun), but during the race it kind of sucked. The winner of the pro men’s race ran a 13:19, 19 seconds away from the road 5K world record of 13:00 set at Carlsbad in 2000. Jarrod Shoemaker ran a blistering 14:13 to take 14th in the men’s pro race. In the end, though, the Carlsbad 5000 is just another road 5K – so what makes this course so fast?

Ethan made a good point that the course is actually slightly undulating and this makes it faster. As you run the course you work different muscles going up the slight uphill portions than on the slight downhill portions. Consequently certain muscles are “resting” while others are working, making the runners fatigue less quickly. Another reason is the quality of field – there were over 8,000 runners at the race divided over five races. My race alone (men & women 29 and under) had over 1,700 runners. My time of 15:12 would win 99% of local road races in my home town of Orlando but only got me fifth in my race (13th overall in the age group catagories). I had a group of runners to run with all the way up to around 4K, and this pacing definitely helped me go faster. However, I think that the biggest reason everyone runs fast on this course is that everyone just thinks that the course is fast. Carlsbad is just a normal road 5K course (in fact it has two u-turns that definitely are not fast), but almost everyone goes into the race thinking they are going to run fast and in turn almost everyone does just that!

Mark Fretta leading the men’s 29 and under race in 2006.

Steve, Ethan and I went to hand out awards at the Carlsbad kiddie’s races on Saturday.