Believe to Achieve

Met Rachelle before the Fleet Feet 5 K.   WU on the course at a leisurely 8:13  pace for 3.1 miles.  Gotta know this course as it weaves and turns a lot!!  But WELL marked (unless some funloving citizen decides to maneuver one of the many cones with arrows just to have a good laugh).  Course accurate and pretty much flat.  Some good wind at times but not really a factor.  The only factors for me--- is utter exhaustion from nonstop go go go ever since my mother came into town last week.  She was at my house since Sunday and she loves to shop.  I do not.   It stresses me out.  Don't know why. It always has.  We just never had any down time.  So I lost a lot of sleep and ran too hard on easy days to get home to go with my mother.   So lack of sleep and running too hard led me to waken on Tuesday with a sore throat and chest congestion.  By Thursday morning I was achy all over but I knew I could handle a 5 k-- only 3.1 miles.  But NOT an all out 5k.  This was effort based hard but not too uncomfortable (oh except for the first mile when I tried to hang closer to Rachelle and started to have a heart attack).  I did not know my pace.  I had my garmin in stopwatch mode.  So no splits.  You could probably add about 14-15 seconds per mile to Rachelle's splits since I was 43 seconds behind her.  Wish I had felt better to be in the 30 second range behind her like I wanted.   I knew Rachelle was being overly generous with herself wanting to only break 20 minutes.  She looked like this race was easy for her.   I told her she needed to lay off her "crack" before the race.  Well at least that is what "caffeine" came up on my voice texting screen.  Before we met I was hoping she wouldn't take the caffeine to slow her down a bit.  It was too funny that it interpreted my voice saying caffeine as "crack".  That would have definitely slowed her down!!  My next goal is to break 19:30 then 19:15, then 19 minutes.  That would be it for the 5 k for me (on an unaided course like this one).  I am quite happy with my 5k PR considering I ran two speedworks of one min on/offs x 15 then x 8 in the last two weeks coming up to this race and only mile to two mile pickups on the mill to 6:31 pace or so x 2 since the SG marathon.  Oh and the grand finale was last week on the track with Rachelle where my lack of SW really showed.  Before that my only SW on track were my 3 mile time trials x 4 before SGM.  I should have given myself a break and left it at that but then did the 8 x 1 on/offs  three days ago to really get me fatigued.  When I feel better I won't feel like I need an inhaler the first mile.   The air was quite chilly and I wore shorts.  My thighs were rather stiff.  More than I would have liked.   I was thinking the morning would be as warm as the last two mornings.   The best part was winning a very large turkey along with a pumpkin pie.  I was third overall.  We were all in the 19 minute range.  Should have sprinted to the finish but I was worried about pushing too hard when I had to work in a few hours.  I survived work just fine.  6.5 hours non stop action on mom/baby.   Yup busy day at work surprisingly.  It sounds like a cop out but I really just know my body well to not push it too far and make myself sicker.  Some days I can and it is okay.  Today was not that day.  NO puke zone for me :D.  AP 6:22 for 3.1 miles. Then cooldown with Rachelle for a little over 3 up past Costco.  8:37 AP.