I didn't think I would be doing this race today. My son and I were going to go hunting but we went last night and after 3 hours of some pretty intense hiking over steep terrain we were both pretty beat and decided not to go this morning. That wasn't a good thing to do the night before a race. The race was 7 miles from home and I had a free entry pass from winning last year. This is just a small local race of around 70 people. A lot are adults and kids in costumes, a lot are special needs kids [the race is a fundraiser for special olympics] and about 1/2 only doing the 1 mile. Not a highly competitive race. It was 29 deg when I got there 40 min before start and it was overcast so I don't think it warmed much if any. After a 2.3 mile warmup I decided to go with shorts and 2 thin long sleeve tech shirts [one would have felt better after half way]. My legs had felt very slow during my warmup. I was struggling to run what I thought was a bit under 8 min pace but after checking my garmin found that it was around 8:35 [probably effects from last nights hiking]. I saw a couple of guys that I didn't know that looked like they could be fast and a girl that was the #2 runner on our girls cross country team that took state 2 years ago and got a scholarship to run somewhere.I thought she might be some competition.
I went out at what I figured was about 6 min pace and 1/2 mile in I was at 5:50 pace. Nobody had gone with me and the pace was feeling too hard. I wasn't expecting much from myself this morning since I haven't done much running since St George Marathon and just last week did the first 5K pace running that I've done in months. Without anybody to race and not feeling great, my motivation level dropped. I slowed to a more comfortable pace and finished the first mile in 6:21. That means the second half of that mile must have been really bad. At the turnaround I was about half a min or more ahead of cross country girl. I checked my garmin again and I was at 6:50 pace for the second mile. Wow! That's slower than my average marathon pace last month. I decided I better speed up or I wouldn't even be getting the workout I wanted. I finished mile 2 in 6:30 and my overall pace was at 6:27. I figured I'd better speed up more or I wouldn't even break 20. I ran the 3rd mile in 6:09 and the last 10th at 5:28 pace. Finished in 19:33 over a minute ahead of second place. Didn't feel like pushing to the hurt level today and wouldn't have run a very good time anyway. Good workout at least. Planning to race next week and hopefully can do a lot better. After getting home I ran 7 miles at 7:48 pace. Felt like I had more pop in my legs than this morning.
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