I only run on days that end in a "y."

What an awesome day for a race.  A cold front came in last night.  I awoke to 55 degrees and a nice breeze with low humidity.  I could not ask for more.

I got up early.  The race was a late start at 9am.  I don't remember it being that late before.  I knew it was going to be crazy downtown as the race was sold out with 10,000 timed runners and 9,000 untimed runners.  I drove down 2 hours early and parked at Barton Springs pool and then did 1.7 miles warm up to the running club's annex.  I hung out there and met up with other runners from the group.  At about 8:15 or so we went out and did another warm-up.  We ran a loop to the starting gates but I had to job back to the annex to use the bathroom and then came back.  

I was not sure what I could do today but I did know I wanted to break 40:00 - that was my goal.  A good running partner, Kevin, told me he thought I could run in the 38:00's with how I have been running in training and that floored me.  I really did not think that was possible but he did plant a seed.  I have not run a 10k in 2 years so I was not sure what I could do.

Based on my goal of 39:50 I knew I needed to run 6:24's across the board.  This course is a steady and slow up to the state capitol building and then a sharp right with a big incline, a left and then after mile 1 another left followed by 2 miles of hills before the course turns fast - the final mile is a slight incline back into town.  My splits pretty much reflect this.

My strategy was to hit 6:24 the first mile and I was off - the timer read 6:44 or something and I panicked - I forgot about my chip time and that I was a few seconds back.  So I dropped the pace here and though the hills.  These were pretty tough but each steep hill is followed by a nice decline so the time can be made up.  I actually like hills so I did not slow down that much going up.  I was afraid this might come back to get me but it didn't.

I flew through miles 4 and 5 and at this time knew I had 39:00 in the bag and let my pace slip a bit.  I had no idea at this time that I could break 39:00 or I might have endured some pain and tried to push harder.  When I hit 6 though I dropped it and when I saw I had a chance at breaking 39:00 I ran hard.  My watch said 38:59 but I was not sure what my official time would be.  Well, happy to report that my official time is 38:57 - so I killed my last time and PR'd by almost a full 3 minutes!!

We ran 3 miles cool down afterward. 

Splits: 6:32, 6:20, 6:18, 6:05, 6:07, 6:15, last .25 @ 5:21.  Overall pace 6:14.

Can't wait to run a 5k to see what I can do.