Jake and Andrea put on a wonderful event today at the Highland High track. When I toed the line I knew I wasn't going to finish in the top 20% of the racers. 12.5 laps later, I think everyone except one runner had lapped me once, and Jake did twice. I wonder when I'll see a 15 minute 5k again. I forgot my watch, so running by feel was the order of the day. I talked to Ashley, and she said she was shooting for sub-20, so I tried to stay in her vicinity. I lost track of the laps, but figured out how many remained after Jake finished. With two laps to go I was right at 17 minutes. Needing to finish the last lap in 80 seconds, I tried to go faster. It took 89 seconds. I probably could have kicked a bit harder, but I was just on the right side of puking, or so I thought. After finishing, I lost my oatmeal. So I tried as hard as I could today, and that was the result. It's a good benchmark for beginning some speed training for the next few months. The trouble is, running faster requires faster training, and today felt awful. I'm generally pretty content to lope along. It was great to meet so many people from the blog. Everyone was very nice and encouraging. I particularly enjoyed the cooldown jog around the park after the faster running concluded. I'm looking forward to OktoberFast 2.0 around Halloween. Also, my son needs a shout-out for helping with the timing. I should have assigned him to count my laps. | 